


Out of the Darkness

by imaginary_golux



Series: Out of the Darkness and Into the Light [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Rey, F/M, Force-Sensitive Finn, Past Torture, the First Order are Assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-14 11:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10535448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Lady Kaisra Ren is the newest Knight of Ren, one of those terrifying black-cloaked figures who stalk the halls of the First Order's Star Destroyers. FN-2187 has just been assigned to join her bodyguard...a position that he knows comes with the very high chance of a very unpleasant death.But not everything is as it seems, and if FN-2187 and Lady Kaisra can learn to trust each other, there is a chance that both their lives will change for the better.Beta by my ever-patient, ever-wonderful, absolutely delightful Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	1. Chapter 1

FN-2187 comes to attention in front of Captain Phasma and salutes crisply. She returns the salute, and FN-2187 drops his gauntleted hand and waits, patiently. An awful lot of Stormtrooper training involves waiting.

“FN-2187,” Captain Phasma says after a short pause. "You have been selected for the bodyguard of the newest Knight of Ren, Lady Kaisra Ren. You will report to the commander of her bodyguard tomorrow at the beginning of first shift."

FN-2187 salutes again. “Sir, yes sir,” he says. He wants to ask, _Will the rest of my squad be there? Why have I been chosen? Is Lady Kaisra as unpredictable and dangerous as Lord Kylo Ren?_ But Stormtroopers do not question their orders.

“You are the best of your training class,” Captain Phasma says, surprising FN-2187 quite a lot. “Lady Kaisra deserves the best, and I know you will fulfill your duty. For the glory of the First Order!”

“For the glory, sir!” FN-2187 says, saluting a third time.

“Very good, FN-2187,” Captain Phasma says. “You are dismissed.”

FN-2187 salutes a fourth time and leaves the Captain's office, so confused his head is spinning. By the time he returns to his platoon's barracks, his new duty has been posted on the duty board by the mess hall, and half a dozen of his platoon mates are gathered around it. “Congratulations, Eight-Seven,” one of them says as he passes. FN-2187 gestures thanks and acknowledgement.

His squad is waiting for him in their barracks room. They might not _like_ him much - he is too skilled, too clever, too prone to asking questions, too empathetic, so say all his evaluations - but they are his squad, and squads have each other's backs. Slip claps FN-2187 on the back as he comes in, and Zeroes and Nines both gesture respectful acknowledgment.

FN-2187 racks his helmet and sits down on his bunk. “Do any of you know anything about Lady Kaisra?” he asks hopefully. He’s not really part of the ‘trooper gossip network - people are too scared he’ll report them to the officers, though he’s never done any such thing - but Zeroes and Nines are, and Slip hears things that even the other two don’t.

“She’s just passed her Trials,” Nines says, shrugging. “No one knows much about her.”

“She’s got a temper,” Slip says. “Not like _him_ , but…” They all know who _he_ is. It’s not wise to speak Lord Kylo Ren’s name anywhere he might conceivably hear, and _anywhere_ on Starkiller is a place Lord Kylo Ren might conceivably hear.

FN-2187 nods. “Thanks, Slip,” he says quietly. It’s not much, but even that slim scrap of information might be enough to keep FN-2187 alive a little longer.

*

The next morning he reports as ordered to Lieutenant DI-3196, who is in charge of the bodyguard for the newest Knight of Ren. There are nine other Stormtroopers there as well, each looking just as nervous as FN-2187 feels. Admittedly he can’t see anyone’s face behind their well-polished helmets, and they are all standing rigidly at attention, but he can see the little tremors in their hands if he looks. FN-2187 doesn’t know any of them, though they’re all from the E or F ranges, so he assumes they’re all, like him, just barely out of their cadet years. Young Stormtroopers to guard the newest Knight of Ren. Assuming any of them survive long enough to get somewhere that Lady Kaisra actually needs to be _guarded_.

There’s a reason Lord Kylo Ren doesn’t have bodyguards anymore, after all.

Thankfully, Lady Kaisra doesn’t make them wait too long. She comes sweeping into the room, her cape swirling around her, a vision of black cloth and pale skin, brown hair like a waterfall and eyes burning gold. FN-2187 feels his breath catch in his throat at the sheer _presence_ of her. She seems to fill the room, for all that she’s shorter and slighter than any of the Stormtroopers arrayed before her.

She’s also _beautiful_. FN-2187 was expecting her to wear a mask, the way Lord Kylo Ren does, but her face is bare and lovely, marred only by the scar along the left side which only just missed the eye - a strangely burned scar that FN-2187 realizes, belatedly, could only have come from a lightsaber.

She’s still standing, though, so he knows who won _that_ battle. And even the scar does not so much detract from her beauty as emphasize it: she is not so delicate as she looks, but more deadly.

Not that it really matters whether FN-2187 thinks she’s beautiful.

She looks the Stormtroopers over and nods briskly to Lieutenant DI-3196, who salutes. All the new bodyguard recruits imitate him in perfect unison. Lady Kaisra gestures curtly for them to drop the salutes.

“So you’re mine,” she says, looking over the Stormtroopers coolly. “Well. Stay out of my way and _don’t_ interrupt my meditation, if you know what’s good for you. And I’ll be wanting to spar with each of you, to see if any of you are good enough to be a practice partner.” She smiles, thinly, an expression with no actual humor in it. “Not that I expect any of you to _actually_ be useful for that.”

FN-2187 would bristle at the insult if doing so weren’t so clearly suicidal. So instead he joins the chorus of, “Yes, Lady Ren!” which rings from his companions’ throats. She nods again and turns away, and Lieutenant DI-3196 gestures for her bodyguard to fall in behind her. Presumably later they’ll work out shifts - she doesn’t need eleven guards at a time, it’ll probably be three at night, four in the morning, four in the afternoon, eight hour shifts - that would be the sensible way to do it, FN-2187 thinks.

Sure enough, as soon as Lady Kaisra vanishes into a meditation room, closing the door _firmly_ behind her, Lieutenant DI-3196 gestures her bodyguard in around him and starts giving orders.

“FN-2187, you’ve got the highest cadet ranking here,” he says briskly. “You’re commander of the afternoon guard. You’ll have FG-1800, EC-1523, and EO-0398. FK-1845, you’ve got the night guard. You’ll have FH-1426 and ED-1975. All of you go find our barracks and get some sleep. Leave your comms on in case I need you. FG-1654, FJ-1285, and EF-1643, you’re with me in the mornings. Clear?”

“Sir, yes sir!” the Stormtroopers chorus, and FN-2187 leads his little squad off towards the barracks at a trot.

*

By the time FN-2187’s comm beeps to remind him that it’s time to go on duty, the barracks is spotless, as it should be, and he has learned the nicknames of all the ‘troopers except those currently with Lady Kaisra. His three are Teener and Easy and Oh-Zero; the night shift are Kriffer and Sharp and the newly-dubbed Youngster, who’s six months older than anyone else. When they ask him, though, he just shrugs.

“Never had a nickname,” he says quietly, and watches them tense and look away. A ‘trooper who hasn’t got a nickname by the end of training is a ‘trooper who no one likes, and FN-2187 knows that as well as anyone. His old squad won’t miss him, and his new squad, well - they’ll follow his orders, because they’re Stormtroopers. But he doubts they’ll ever be his friends.

He and his squad report to Lieutenant DI-3196 outside of one of the many conference rooms on the officers’ decks, and Lieutenant DI-3196 nods to FN-2187.

“She’s been in a meeting since 0900,” he says quietly. “When she’s done she’ll want to head to the sparring rooms. You’re all to take turns against her. If anyone is seriously hurt, comm me before sending them to medical.”

FN-2187 gestures respectful acknowledgment. “I will, sir.” Lieutenant DI-3196 nods curtly and gestures for his squad to follow him, and FN-2187 positions his squad on either side of the corridor to wait for Lady Kaisra to emerge.

They’re standing there at attention for two hours, in the end, and FN-2187 honestly doesn’t want to think about what sort of meeting might take _seven kriffing hours_ to complete. Lady Kaisra looks simultaneously drained and furious when she emerges, General Hux only a few steps behind her. FN-2187 and his squad fall in behind her immediately, ignoring the General. He’s not in their chain of command anymore. They answer only to the Knight of Ren who is their special charge, until they are relieved of duty or - more likely - decommissioned.

Lady Kaisra leads them directly to one of the sparring rooms, and beckons them to follow her in curtly. “You,” she says, pointing at Teener. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

All of the ‘troopers of her bodyguard are good - the best of the cadets - but Teener, as FN-2187 has learned only that morning, is a tech specialist, good at keeping the enormous ventral cannons running smoothly. She’s _qualified_ at armed and unarmed melee combat, of course, since that’s a required skillset for any Stormtrooper, but she’s not the best in her class by any means.

Lady Kaisra disarms her of the practice riot baton in about ten seconds flat, and snorts in disgust. “Well, not you then,” she says, and beckons Easy over. “Pick it up,” she says, flicking a hand at the discarded baton. “Maybe you’ll do better.”

Easy lasts a _little_ longer, but he’s a flametrooper - they’re not supposed to _close_ with their enemies. The riot baton goes flying, and Oh-Zero catches it on reflex.

“Alright,” Lady Kaisra says, sounding halfway between amused and annoyed. “You next.” Oh-Zero is a sharpshooter. FN-2187 winces as the baton goes flying again, steps forward to catch it, and salutes Lady Kaisra as he takes Oh-Zero’s place.

“ _Please_ tell me _one_ of you is vaguely useful,” Lady Kaisra says bitterly, and comes at him with her quarterstaff like she’s planning on knocking him into a wall. FN-2187 blocks the blow, slides away from it and comes back around to attempt his own strike, while thinking in the back of his mind that he’s immensely grateful she’s using the quarterstaff without activating the saber ends. _That_ would end badly for FN-2187.

Lady Kaisra starts to grin as she blocks FN-2187’s blow and drops one end of her staff to trip him up. He hops over it neatly and hits out hard for her exposed shoulder, and she laughs aloud as she sways backwards, avoiding the blow neatly, and then they settle into the sparring match properly, trading blows and blocks with vicious speed. FN-2187 _is_ good at this, and it’s a good thing too, because Lady Kaisra is fast and agile, her footwork impeccable, and FN-2187 has to _work_ to keep up with her. But he _can_ , and honestly once he’s gotten into the rhythm of the bout he starts enjoying himself. She’s ruthless but not cruel about it, and FN-2187 has always liked a challenge.

He loses track of time, everything narrowing down to the slender woman in front of him, the quarterstaff in her hands and the light in her Force-golden eyes and the subtle cues that tell him which way she’ll strike next. The other ‘troopers in the room are irrelevant, obstacles to be avoided but neither opponents to be wary of nor allies to rely on. There is only FN-2187 and Lady Kaisra, and the fight.

It ends, at last, when she steps back and raises a hand from the grip of her quarterstaff, and FN-2187 falls back to attention, breath coming fast and a grin on his face that he’s endless grateful his helmet hides. Lady Kaisra is grinning, too, and FN-2187 is vaguely proud to see that she’s breathing hard and wisps of her hair are plastered to her face with sweat. At least he didn’t make this easy on her. “What’s your designation?” she asks, sounding far more cheerful than she did an hour ago

“FN-2187,” he replies. She nods.

“You’ll spar with me every day,” she orders.

“Yes, Lady Ren,” FN-2187 says. There’s no other response possible, of course, but he’s actually glad - that was the most pleasant bout he’s had in a _long_ time, and if he cannot have friends among his comrades, cannot earn a nickname and a place, at least he can do this: he can be the best there is, the Stormtrooper all other Stormtroopers grudgingly admire. He can be good enough to spar with the Lady Kaisra Ren.


	2. Chapter 2

The Lady Ren is given her orders, and she and her bodyguards leave for the _Imperator_ , a brand-new Star Destroyer for a brand-new Knight of Ren. FN-2187 doesn’t know any of the Stormtroopers who crew the enormous new ship - they’re all C or D ranges, well-trained and competent, with a smattering of Es. All of the F range Stormtroopers are still on Starkiller, finishing their training or waiting to be selected for a ship. Except FN-2187 and Target and Teener and Fish and Kriffer and Sharp, anyhow, who are all here, standing guard over the Lady Kaisra Ren as she goes from meeting to sparring room to private suite and back again in endless rounds. FN-2187 isn’t actually sure what a Knight of Ren needs to spend so much time in meetings _for_ until the day she slams the conference room door open and whirls to glare behind her at the officers frozen in their chairs and snaps, “If you do not believe me, take it up with Lord Snoke, but _I_ tell you that that is the way the path of the future runs!”

Then she turns to glare at her bodyguards. Teener and Easy and Oh-Zero look like they want to shrink back into the walls - this is the sort of mood that gets Stormtroopers decommissioned with fatal injuries, this is the sort of mood that every Stormtrooper fears in a Knight of Ren - but she just gestures abruptly to FN-2187. “You, with me,” she snaps. “You other three, stay _out_ of the sparring room.”

“Yes, Lady Ren,” Teener and Easy and Oh-Zero chorus, managing to keep the relief out of their tones, though FN-2187 can see it in the quick flicker of finger-talk as the Lady Ren goes stalking down the corridor, her cloak swirling in her wake.

FN-2187 picks up a practice baton as soon as he gets into the room, and not a moment _too_ soon, as Lady Kaisra spins around with her quarterstaff already in hand and snaps a blow at his head that would have easily shattered his helmet if he hadn’t blocked it.

Lady Kaisra is always ruthless, but today she is _vicious_ , her blows fast and hard, leaving FN-2187 no breathing space at all. He holds his own for a little while, but she drives him back across the room step by step, blow by furious blow, until he finds himself trapped against the far wall, and her next blow _snaps_ the baton in his hands, and FN-2187 watches the quarterstaff come around in a hissing arc and _knows_ he is going to die -

And it stops, an inch from his upraised hands, shaking in the air. There is a long, breathless pause. And then Lady Kaisra steps back, lowering the quarterstaff, and a tension FN-2187 didn’t even know he was feeling runs out of his bones, leaving him slumped weakly against the wall.

“Take off your helmet,” Lady Kaisra says, very quietly. FN-2187 gulps. He can think of only one reason she would want his helmet off, and it’s so that it’ll be a little bit easier to crack his skull like an eggshell. But he takes it off, because Stormtroopers obey.

Lady Kaisra steps forward, quarterstaff dangling unregarded from her hand, and puts her free hand up to FN-2187’s chin, tilting his face so she can look into his eyes. “Oh,” she says, and FN-2187 blinks down into her golden eyes and wonders what she sees, and is utterly astonished when she begins to smile.

“You’re Force-sensitive,” she says, smile slowly broadening.

FN-2187 stares at her. “I - _what_?”

“You’re Force-sensitive,” she repeats. “You stopped my staff with the Force.” She cocks her head a little, looking thoughtful. “You could become a Knight of Ren,” she says slowly. “Or.”

“Or?” FN-2187 asks, thinking about the Knights of Ren with their black cloaks and their cruelty - Lady Kaisra excepted, as she’s normally not cruel at all.

“You could become _my_ apprentice,” she says.

FN-2187 thinks about it. He thinks about Supreme Leader Snoke, who he’s never seen, but whose words he has heard repeated over and over again. He thinks about Lord Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, who has no bodyguards because not even the First Order can afford to waste that many Stormtroopers. He thinks about Lady Kaisra, who has not yet seriously injured _any_ of her bodyguards, and who chose FN-2187 as her sparring partner because he was good enough to keep up with her. He thinks about being given a choice, for the very first time in his life.

“Yes,” he says. “I will be your apprentice, Lady Ren.”

Lady Kaisra smiles as wide as he’s ever seen. “Good,” she says. “Good.”

*

The next day, Lady Kaisra orders the rest of FN-2187’s squad to wait outside the sparring room again, and they take up their positions outside the door with relieved alacrity. FN-2187 has been earning respect, if not affection, from his squad for the way he takes Lady Kaisra’s attention onto himself - they all know the statistics as well as he does, and it’s frankly a _miracle_ that none of them have been decommissioned yet.

“Take off your armor,” she says, once the door is closed. FN-2187 startles a little. He thought he was here to be her apprentice, not her favorite - but -

“It’s hard to meditate in armor,” she explains, with a tiny quirked smile in the corner of her mouth. FN-2187 breathes out again, slowly, and shucks his armor with practiced efficiency, stacking it by the door and going to join her in the middle of the room wearing only his black undersuit.

“Sit down,” she says, demonstrating, and he mirrors her. “Close your eyes, and breathe deeply,” she says quietly, and FN-2187 obeys. “Now - _listen_.”

For a long time, FN-2187 hears nothing but his own slow breaths, and the even breathing of Lady Kaisra across from him. He can hear the hum of the ship’s engines, low in his bones, and even, finally, the soft _lub-dub_ of his own heartbeat.

And then he hears the music, faint and far away, like nothing else he’s ever heard - like every instrument in the galaxy played perfectly in harmony, like the music the stars would sing if they could, like - like the song of life itself. The more he listens, the louder it gets, until he cannot hear anything else at all, until the music wraps around him and through him and he is only one more note in the enormous song.

He doesn’t know how long he floats, bodiless and joyful, in the endless perfect music, but at last it starts to fade - or not fade, but grow gentler - and FN-2187 finds himself back in his own body, drenched in sweat, sitting on the floor of the sparring room with Lady Kaisra watching him, a tiny smile on her lovely face. He can still hear the glorious music in the back of his mind - suspects he will _always_ hear it, from now on - but he can pay attention to other things now.

Lady Kaisra nods approvingly. She looks - she looks like she’s _glowing_ , now, and FN-2187 is pretty sure she wasn’t glowing before. Nothing else in the room is glowing, though, until FN-2187 looks down at his own hands. _Those_ are glowing as brightly as Lady Kaisra is.

“Permission to ask a question, Lady Ren?” he ventures carefully.

“Ask,” she says instantly.

“Why are we glowing?”

Lady Kaisra chuckles softly. “Oh good, you see it. Every living thing glows at least a little bit. That’s the Force moving through it. People like you and me, we glow a _lot_ , because we can _use_ it.” She looks happier than FN-2187 has ever seen her before, her eyes bright gold and gleaming, her shoulders down and easy. “And so your _second_ lesson is going to be hiding your glow.”

“Hiding it?” FN-2187 asks, and then figures it out. “So the other Knights of Ren can’t see it.”

“Precisely,” Lady Kaisra says. “If they find you, the _best_ that will happen would be having us duel - to the death. And you _know_ how that would end.” FN-2187 winces. “So. To hide yourself. Watch carefully.”

FN-2187 concentrates hard as she does - _something_ \- and her glow dims until it’s so faint he can barely see it. He can’t quite make out what she did, but it almost looks like she put a field around herself, like the one at the entrance to the ship bays to keep the air in, so FN-2187 closes his eyes and concentrates, and thinks about having a field around him. Nothing happens. He tries again and again, seeing every time he opens his eyes that Lady Kaisra is getting ever more agitated, until suddenly he has an epiphany.

This time he imagines the field like _armor_ , like the white plasteel shell that he puts on every morning, as familiar to him as his own skin. He builds it piece by piece around himself, and he can _feel_ it snapping into place, just like his plasteel armor does, each piece connecting to the next until he is protected on every side. He opens his eyes to see Lady Kaisra smiling.

“Good,” she says. FN-2187 looks down, and sure enough, his hands are only glowing very slightly. “You must never let that shield down unless you are with me, in private,” Lady Kaisra adds, and FN-2187 nods firmly.

“Good,” she says again. “ _Now_ we can spar.”

FN-2187 is frankly grateful for the chance to do something simple and physical, and enjoys the resulting bout a great deal, even if he does lose.

*

That night at dinner, the Lieutenant slides an extra half-portion of sweetened protein bar across the table and gives FN-2187 a little gesture of appreciation. “She’s chosen you, has she?” he asks gruffly.

FN-2187 gestures agreement. It’s not _quite_ the truth - he’s Lady Kaisra’s apprentice, not her favorite - but pretending to be her favorite will be a good cover. Everyone will _expect_ him to be spending lots of time with her in private, and to be exhausted afterwards, too.

They’ll also expect him to be _injured_ afterwards, of course. There’s a reason there’s no actual _competition_ for the position of favorite of a Knight of Ren. If the life expectancy of a bodyguard is half that of a normal Stormtrooper, the life expectancy of a favorite is barely a _quarter_ of that half. Knights of Ren do not play gently with their toys.

Fish fumbles with her tray as she gets up. “Better you than me,” she mutters. “Wish the lady’d wear a mask. Those eyes are -” she breaks off, shuddering hard enough to make her armor clatter.

The Lieutenant makes a short, sharp gesture of negation. “None of that sort of talk,” he says sternly. “We’ve already set a kriffing _record_ for time to first decommissioning among a Knight’s bodyguard, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Yessir,” Fish says, snapping to attention.

FN-2187 eats his extra half a sweet-bar and takes his tray in, and heads not for the barracks - he’s too wired to sleep, still - but for one of the few recreational areas open to the Stormtroopers: the observation deck, where anyone who wants to and who has a few minutes to spare from a sleep shift can watch the stars flash by. FN-2187 claims an out-of-the-way bench and sits quietly as the _Imperator_ slices through hyperspace, thinking about the choice he’s made.

He could still choose to be a Knight of Ren. If he went to the General in charge of the _Imperator_ \- General Mimur, FN-2187 knows, though he’s never actually seen the woman - and demonstrated his newfound abilities, General Mimur would be on the hypercom with Supreme Leader Snoke inside the hour. FN-2187 would be sent to the Supreme Leader for training, and someday he’d wear a black cloak and order Stormtroopers around like it was his birthright.

If he survived.

There are rumors - there are always rumors, but these FN-2187 thinks might be true, given how gruesome they are - that the Knights of Ren must face a death-duel in order to earn their names and cloaks. That every Knight of Ren has fought and killed someone as close to them as a squadmate, in order to survive. That Knights of Ren who disappoint the Supreme Leader are punished not with simple decommissioning, like Stormtroopers are, but with such cruelties that no Stormtrooper has even been able to imagine what they are, though late-night bull sessions have come up with lots of options.

And though Lady Kaisra is sometimes brusque and often sharp-tongued, she is, to the blank astonishment of all her bodyguards, not actively cruel. She does not amuse herself by inflicting pain on them, as some Knights are known to do, nor take out her anger by forcibly decommissioning them, as Lord Kylo Ren does. FN-2187 is honestly pretty sure that she didn’t mean to injure _him_ , yesterday, but was only so blind with anger that she would have struck at whoever was before her - and she did not react to his unthinking, unwitting use of the Force with rage, but with _wonder_. With what FN-2187 can only call kindness, even.

So FN-2187 will take his chances with Lady Kaisra, and learn what she can teach him. He’s not sure where that will leave him, when he’s fully trained and capable of using the Force as Lady Kaisra does, assuming he survives that long. Supreme Leader Snoke will probably not be amused to discover that one of his Knights has trained up an apprentice to follow her. Perhaps Lady Kaisra intends to overthrow Supreme Leader Snoke, using FN-2187 as her assistant. FN-2187 doesn’t quite know how he feels about that, but thankfully it’s just an assumption, nothing more. She might easily have some other plan in mind. FN-2187 doesn’t pretend to understand the way Lady Kaisra’s mind works. It’s never wise to think you _know_ how one of the Knights of Ren is going to act, though erring on the side of ‘mindless violence’ is usually pretty safe.

Except, of course, with Lady Kaisra.

FN-2187 returns to his bunk without having come to much of any conclusion except that he’ll see this through to the end, whatever that end may be. Lady Kaisra has earned that much of his loyalty, at least.


	3. Chapter 3

The days go by so quickly it makes FN-2187’s head spin, sometimes. He learns to meditate - which turns out to be nothing more than opening his mind to the song of the Force and letting it carry him, and is one of the most relaxing and soothing things he’s ever felt. He learns to pick things up with the Force, and to move them around. He learns to hide himself from normal sight, as well as concealing his power from those with the eyes to see it. He learns - uncomfortably - how to make others do as he wills, with nothing but the power of his own voice. He learns more happily how to move _himself_ with the Force, leaping all the way across the sparring room or levitating to the ceiling, and he and Lady Kaisra spar in three dimensions, dancing on the air as they whirl around each other. These and many other things he learns, and learns fast. FN-2187 has _always_ been a fast learner, but he’s never been so grateful for it before.

The day he learns Force telepathy, everything changes.

Lady Kaisra says, quietly - she is nearly always quiet when they are together in private like this, far calmer in FN-2187’s company than out among the officers and Stormtroopers of the _Imperator’s_ crew - “Meet my eyes, and meet my mind.” FN-2187 composes himself comfortably - it’s always wise to learn these new skills while he’s relaxed, before he tries them in battle conditions - and looks into Lady Kaisra’s Force-gold eyes and reaches out with his mind and his powers.

The sparring room falls away, and he finds himself standing instead in a desert, wide and blazing hot and arid. There is a woman there with him who he recognizes, belatedly, as Lady Kaisra, but she is wearing a flowing tan tunic and wrapped breeches instead of her billowing black cloak and robes, and there is no scar upon her face. Her eyes are a warm brown, not Force-gold; her hair is bound up in three knots instead of flowing free. Only the quarterstaff is the same.

FN-2187 looks down at himself, and finds that he looks just as he always does, dressed in his black undersuit with his boots shining white against the sand. “Where are we?” he asks, looking up at Lady Kaisra again.

“Jakku,” Lady Kaisra says, almost wistfully. “Or - my memory of Jakku. This is my mindscape. I’ll be teaching you how to build one. Trained Force-users have these, so that it’s much harder to read our minds. If you try to read one of your squadmates, you’ll just get their thoughts, easy as breathing. But a Knight of Ren - or, I suppose, a Jedi - will have a mindscape to protect themselves.”

FN-2187 looks around the vast expanse of sand, baffled. “And yours is...is Jakku?”

“I was...left here, as a child,” Lady Kaisra says slowly, leaning on her quarterstaff and looking out at the endless horizon. “I lived here five years before Kylo Ren found me and brought me to Snoke. I didn’t like it, but I survived. And if my parents ever do come back for me, they’ll come to Jakku, and I won’t be there.” She turns to meet FN-2187’s eyes, and he startles badly at the depths of the suppressed hatred there. “And I will never forgive Kylo Ren _or_ Snoke for that.”

Then her mouth quirks into a tiny smile, and she adds, “Also, a desert is a very useful mindscape for concealing things. Look around: could _you_ find anything I didn’t want you to?”

FN-2187 looks around at the endless featureless sand and shakes his head. “No, Lady Ren.”

She grimaces. “Don’t call me that - not here,” she says sharply. “Here, I’m not what _they_ made me.” FN-2187 looks at her in surprise. “Here,” she adds, almost gently, “you can call me Rey.”

“Rey?” FN-2187 asks, startled.

“It’s the name my mother gave me,” she says, voice full of endless sorrow. “I clung to it even when Snoke tried to take it from me. I kept it, hidden safe under the sand. Here, I am Rey, as my mother named me, and I shall remember that _forever_.”

It’s a beautiful name, FN-2187 thinks, the more so for being given out of love - for so he understands the concepts of mothers. It doesn’t come up _often_ \- Stormtroopers are not encouraged to think about things like mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, because that might lead to wondering where _they_ came from and if anyone there is still missing them - but they were told _enough_ , at least, that FN-2187 can sort of extrapolate.

“I haven’t any other name,” he says quietly, feeling obscurely guilty that he cannot offer a secret for a secret.

Lady Kaisra - _Rey_ , desert-raised Rey with her mother’s love still resonating in her bones - cocks her head curiously. “I thought Stormtroopers had nicknames,” she says, surprising FN-2187 badly. He didn’t think _any_ of the officers and Knights knew about that - didn’t think any of them noticed enough about the Stormtroopers to _care_ what they called each other.

“We do,” he admits, “usually. But I’m - not well liked. No one’s ever cared to give me one.”

“Ah,” says Rey, and considers that for a while. FN-2187 watches the sand blow around them, and wonders at the clear blue sky that seems to stretch on forever. It feels quite real, this mindscape Rey has built for herself. FN-2187 wonders what his should be.

At last Rey says, tentatively, “May _I_ give you a name?”

FN-2187 startles. “You would - do that for me?” he asks, too incredulous to be hopeful.

“You’re the closest thing I have to a friend,” Rey says wistfully. “You’re - I _like_ you. You’re smart and skillful and you don’t treat me like I’m about to explode. If you wanted a name from me, I’d be proud to give you one.”

“Please,” says FN-2187, marveling. A friend. He has a _friend_. “I would - I would like a name given by a friend.”

Rey steps forward across the sand until they’re standing quite close together, their shadows long and stark against the sand off to FN-2187’s left. “Then - may I call you Finn?”

 _Finn_. FN-2187 rolls the word around in his mouth, tasting it. It’s a good name, short and easy to say, a name FN-2187 can imagine being called across a crowded room or spoken quietly by a friend. “Finn,” he says aloud, and smiles. “Yes. Finn. I like that.”

“My friend Finn,” Rey says, beaming as bright as the Jakku sun.

“My friend Rey,” Finn replies, and matches her smile.

*

After that, Finn can’t help thinking of Lady Kaisra as _Rey_ , though he’s disciplined enough that the name never passes his lips: he only speaks it “aloud” while he’s in her mindscape or his own, a deep forest that seemed to be waiting for him when he asked the Force to help him build a place to keep himself safe in his own mind. Rey likes his forest a _lot_. When he invites her into his mindscape, she goes scrambling up one of the enormous trees and dangles from the branches, whooping with gleeful laughter, and if Finn wants to talk to her he has to wait until she’s calmed down a little and stopped whispering, “Everything’s so _green,_ ” at irregular intervals. He doesn’t mind the wait, though. It’s kind of adorable, actually, to see the mask that is Lady Kaisra fall away to reveal this joyful young woman who smiles as bright as sunshine.

And he can’t help thinking of himself as _Finn._ He still answers to FN-2187, of course, just as Rey answers to Lady Kaisra Ren, but always in the back of his mind is the knowledge that he is not _just_ another Stormtrooper. He is Finn, whose name was given to him by his friend, and that means he is more than just another cog in the vast machine that is the First Order.

It means he’s a _person_.

It means, too, that he and Rey become ever closer as the weeks roll past. They spend long hours talking, either in his mindscape or hers, and Finn grows used to the heat of the desert sun (though Rey makes him a rock outcropping to shade him), and to the cool peace of the forest in his own mind. They talk about a lot of things - about Jakku, and Starkiller’s icy plains, and the few other planets Finn has seen, and the half dozen Rey has encountered. They talk about things they’ve seen and heard from the other Knights of Ren or from the Stormtroopers, about which officers are truly bad news and which ones are simply devoted to the Order and which ones are just going along to get along. Finn tells her about Captain Phasma, who’s always been stern and expected a lot from her ‘troopers but is almost never actively _cruel_ , and Rey tells him about the generals she’s met, and how Hux is the worst but all of them are nasty people down to their core. You have to be, to be a general in the First Order, she explains. It’s one of the things Supreme Leader Snoke looks for.

And then, when they both know down to their bones that they can trust each other - when there’s a branch on Finn’s favorite tree that is curved just right for Rey to sit on it, and a stone in Rey’s desert that shields Finn from the sun no matter what time of day it is, when they are both as comfortable in each other’s mindscape as their own - then, they tell each other about their childhoods.

*

“It wasn’t... _bad_ , necessarily,” Finn says thoughtfully, leaning back against his stone in Rey’s desert, the one she has told him is built of her affection for him - the one that is so tall and strong that he thinks a meteor could hit it and it would be completely unfazed. “It wasn’t pleasant, ever, but when you’re a cadet they don’t decommission you for any random little thing, you know. You’re still learning, and the officers do understand that. Mostly. Some of them - some of them are practice for later.” He shrugs. “But mostly if you kriff up you get your rations docked, or extra running, or more weight in your pack. Push-ups. That sort of thing.”

“So it’s just...war training? All day?” Rey asks. She’s sitting down in the sand, which has made itself into a comfortable little mound behind her back, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists, and she’s watching him with wide brown eyes.

“Once you’re out of the nursery, yeah,” Finn says. “You learn reading and writing and basic mathematics in nursery, and how to take care of yourself and your armor, and basic food preparation in case your unit gets sent off into the wilderness for a while, which does happen sometimes. Couple other things. How to fall, that was big. How to clean a blaster and check if it’s charged.”

“I learned which parts of a starship were valuable,” Rey says thoughtfully. “On Jakku, I mean. How to clean them so they’d be worth more. How many portions it takes to stay alive a full week. How to run on sand. How to fight so people won’t want to fight you anymore.”

Finn winces. He’s noticed that, when he spars all-out with her: Rey fights _dirty_ when she wants to. Blows that even the Stormtrooper trainers would have called unacceptable; moves that take full advantage of the powers she has greater mastery of than he does. There’s a reason, he suspects, that she did not die on Jakku as a child, and it’s because when she needs to be, she can be utterly _ruthless_.

“And...after Jakku?” he asks, carefully.

Rey grimaces, and Finn glances over at the horizon to see that there’s a sandstorm gathering, a faint haze now but with the distinct possibility of growing if Rey gets angrier. Being in Rey’s mindscape when she’s angry is - well, Finn’s only had that experience _once_ , and doesn’t care to repeat it.

“I learned to fight,” she says quietly. “I learned never to trust anyone. You excepted,” she adds, with a tiny quirk of a grin. “I learned everything I’m teaching you, but I learned it because if I didn’t then - well. Snoke...didn’t like it if I didn’t.” Finn winces, and Rey nods. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she says quietly.

There’s a pause. And then Reys says, “I learned that if I want to leave the First Order, I’m going to need to do it _perfectly_.”

Finn shivers. It’s the first time either of them has said aloud what the obvious endpoint of this apprenticeship is: they’ll either need to flee the First Order, or defeat Supreme Leader Snoke and all the Knights of Ren, and with only two of them, Finn’s pretty sure defeating all the Knights is...not going to happen. But Rey is lost in thought now, her eyes starting to tinge gold, which they only _rarely_ do here in her mindscape.

“He brought me to a room in the heart of his palace,” she says quietly. “No one ever comes there except Snoke and the - technicians. He showed me a woman who would have been a Knight of Ren, but she failed her Trial - she wouldn’t kill.” She gulps. “That’s what the Trial is, you know. Snoke puts you in a room with the only person who’s been consistently nice to you for the _whole_ time you’re in training, the one who dried your tears and bandaged your injuries and told you you’d be alright - and he gives you both lightsabers, and says only one of you can leave alive.” She puts a hand up to where the scar doesn’t show on her mindscape-image of herself, the unmarked cheek, and Finn reaches across the sand to take her other hand gently.

“ _I_ passed my Trial,” Rey says harshly. “But - she didn’t, the woman Snoke keeps beneath his throne room.” She takes a deep breath. Finn keeps half an eye on the horizon, on the growing cloud of darkness there.

“She didn’t have a mind anymore, not really,” Rey says quietly. “Just - pain, endless pain. And Snoke said to me, ‘See my prize? Even if I lose every one of my Knights, I shall have more, for she will bear them for me. But there is only one of her. You are a Knight, now, and you do my bidding in the galaxy. But should you ever fail me…’”

The sandstorm is black as midnight now, but Finn doesn’t really care, as he goes tumbling out of his comfortable seat against the stone to gather Rey up in his arms and cradle her close. “He _won’t_ ,” he says, desperately. “He won’t, I won’t let him, I’ll learn to be better than the best Knight of Ren and if he ever tries I’ll cut his damned heart out _myself_ , I don’t care if it’s treason - kriff, Rey, I _won’t_ let him.”

“There are eighteen Knights,” Rey says hoarsely, throat choked with the tears she is not shedding. “You can’t defeat them all.”

“I can _try_ ,” Finn snarls. And then he takes a deep breath. “And if we lose, Rey - if we’re captured, if we’re doomed - I swear to you, I’ll decommission you myself. _He won’t get you_.”

And Rey - unbreakable Rey, Rey who blazes with the Force and with fury, glorious Rey who shines like the Jakku sun - bursts into grateful tears.

Finn sits there and watches the sandstorm dissipate and cradles his best and only friend in his arms, and thinks to himself that while he _will_ do what he has promised, he will see to it that Snoke never gets his hands on Rey, well, it’d be a lot better if they could just get away.

Where, and how, and when - those questions are a little harder to answer.

*

“There’s a...thing we can do,” Rey says, some days later, as she curls herself more comfortably into the tree she’s chosen in Finn’s mindscape. “A Force thing.”

“Yeah?” Finn asks. He’s lying back on the soft moss at the base of the tree, looking up at her. It’s astonishingly comfortable.

“We can make a bond between us, a Force bond,” Rey says. “I’ve got one with _Snoke_ , curse him, and one with Kylo Ren, but they’re...weak. I didn’t want them, so they’re flimsy. I could snap them _now_ , if I wanted to, but then they’d assume I’d either died or betrayed them, and General Mimur could tell them I wasn’t dead.”

“I see,” Finn says. “But if we _both_ want it?”

“Then it’ll be stronger than durasteel,” Rey says, grinning. “We’ll be able to find each other across the whole galaxy, and feel a little of what the other is feeling, and help shield each other.”

“Then of course,” Finn says, and stretches a hand up to her, and she flops down along her branch and reaches down.

When their hands meet it’s like a tiny explosion in the Force, something coming into being and settling into place between them like it’s always been meant to be there. Finn gasps. Rey grins.

“There you are,” she says softly, and Finn, feeling the echo of her in the back of his mind, the golden thread between them that has wound itself into the roots of his soul, grins back.

“Here I am,” he replies.

They hold hands for a long time, not needing to talk, just basking in the bond between them.


	4. Chapter 4

Lady Kaisra doesn’t fight alongside the Stormtroopers often - the _Imperator_ can deal with most things without her, after all - but now and again General Mimur asks very politely if the Knight of Ren will come along for intimidation purposes. Lady Kaisra is _good_ at being intimidating, with her black cloak and her flaring golden eyes, her double-ended lightsaber staff and the double-strength battle squad of her bodyguards around her. Finn’s squad and the Lieutenant’s squad join up for such occasions, ringing their Knight in an impenetrable wall of white plasteel and raised blasters.

Not that Lady Kaisra _needs_ them. She can stop blaster bolts with an upraised hand, after all, and is almost certainly the best single fighter aboard the _Imperator_. But it would be improper for a Knight of Ren to go into battle without a bodyguard, and so Finn stands behind Lady Kaisra with his blaster in his hands and watches yet another planet’s capital be crushed by the overwhelming might of the First Order’s army.

Finn never did get sent on any pacification missions. His squad was _slated_ for one, he knows, but he was reassigned before that could happen. And as Lady Kaisra’s bodyguard, he’s never actually had to _fire_ his blaster - not in combat. He’s one of the best marksmen on the _Imperator_ in the firing range, but he’s never actually shot someone.

He never wants to.

He learns _that_ the first time Lady Kaisra goes to battle with her bodyguard around her. He watches the Stormtrooper battalions marching into the city, firing at anyone who dares to move, and he watches the civilians _die_ , unarmed and helpless and desperate, trying to shield their children or their lovers with their own bodies and failing again and again, and he wants to throw up. He doesn’t, because vomiting in a helmet is really quite unpleasant, and also because that’s the sort of weakness that gets Stormtroopers decommissioned, but he wants to. _This_ is the glory of the First Order? _This_ is what the Stormtroopers were trained to do? This is not battle, not as Finn has imagined it. This is a slaughter, a massacre. There is no glory here.

He holds it together, though. They get back to the ship - Lady Kaisra didn’t have to do anything but look intimidating to make the leaders of the weak resistance forces on this planet fall to their knees and grovel in terror - and Lady Kaisra leads the way back to her rooms and turns to gesture at Finn. “You, with me,” she says, and the Lieutenant signs _good luck_ to Finn behind her back as Finn follows her in. It’s the first time he’s been in her private rooms rather than the sparring room or a meditation room, and he knows the other ‘troopers of the bodyguard think that Lady Kaisra has been...entertained enough by the deaths of their civilian enemies to want to satiate herself with her favorite. At that, they probably think Finn is lucky: some of the Knights of Ren don’t wait until they’re in _private_ to amuse themselves with whichever Stormtrooper is unlucky enough to have caught their attention.

“Meditation,” she says, as soon as the door is sealed behind them. “Meditation will help.”

Finn nods and strips out of his armor as quickly as he can, leaving it in an untidy heap as he drops to sit on the carpeted floor and closes his eyes, opening his mind to the Force.

The endless song which is the universe wraps Finn up, carries him off, so that he is suspended in its beauty. It sings so loud that he cannot think of anything but its song, anything but its glory, and though he can hear the sadness which is the song of the planet the First Order has just conquered, he can hear, too, the birth of a star, the birth of a child, the joy of a moon on which life has just arisen, the brightness which is Rey. He thinks that he may be weeping, though he cannot feel the tears on his cheeks - his soul is far from his body, floating in the Force. He thinks that Rey may be curled in his lap, clinging to him as they both grieve.

He thinks he understands, now, viscerally (blood and screams and the horrible stench of the burnt bodies), why they need to leave the First Order. But - more than that -

He opens his eyes in his own body again, and looks down at Rey where she’s nestled against him, meets her Force-golden eyes and says, softly, “We can’t just leave. We need to _win_.”

Rey startles a little, and then, slowly, she smiles. “Just you and me, versus eight million Stormtroopers and all the Knights of Ren?”

“Well,” Finn says, thinking it through, this new decision that he’s made almost without meaning to make it, the certainty that the Force sang into him, “maybe not _just_ the two of us.”

Rey nods, eyes gleaming. “You’re the strategist,” she says.

Finn nods back, solemnly, knowing that they have taken the first step on a path that will likely see them dead at the end of it - but it is not a path he can turn away from, not now that he has _seen_. Not now that he _knows_.

“First thing, then,” he says, “is getting me fully trained.”

Rey grins. “Alright,” she says. “I can do that.”

*

Finn throws himself into his training even more determinedly than he has been - and he has been trying hard already. His squadmates think Rey is doing unspeakable things to him, of course, because he comes stumbling out of the sparring room or her quarters exhausted and bruised and sometimes wincing. Finn lets them think that. It’s good cover. And they are all grateful to him, these days, for the fact that somehow - miraculously - every single one of her original bodyguards is still alive. Finn is gaining, rather to his own mild dismay, a reputation for being really startlingly good in bed. What else could keep a Knight of Ren so interested for so long?

Mostly what this means is that his squadmates make sure he always gets his full portion and a little more at dinner, and ensure he gets his full sleeping hours, even offering to clean his armor for him if he’s looking particularly shaky. They still don’t _like_ him much, Finn knows - if nothing else, it’s not wise to actually become _friends_ with a Knight’s favorite, because they’re going to end up decommissioned sooner rather than later - and he still doesn’t have a ‘trooper nickname or the easy camaraderie they share with each other, but they’re...respectful, at least. Kind, even, sometimes, within the constraints of their positions.

They’d still report him to the General if any of them found out what’s _really_ going on between Rey and Finn, but that’s a given. Finn can plan for that.

What he can’t quite plan for, yet, is how they’re going to not just get away - that, at least, could probably be managed without much trouble, if they’re quick and clever and lucky - but also strike a serious blow against the First Order, how they’re going to take this cancerous organization _down_.

Ideally, they’d be able to make contact with the Resistance and the infamous General Leia Organa, but how in the galaxy are they supposed to convince her that a Knight of Ren and a Stormtrooper want to join the side of the Light?

*

Rey turns seventeen, as far as she knows, and Finn discovers quite by accident that he can Force-heal things when he gets a hit in on Rey during a sparring match that raises a bruise so livid he can’t help reaching out to touch it in dismay. Under his hands and will it fades away again to nothing, and he and Rey both stare at the unmarked skin.

“That’s interesting,” Rey says after a few moments. “I can’t do that.”

“I didn’t know I could,” Finn replies.

“Huh,” says Rey, and after that Finn heals any injuries Rey takes during their sparring, and most of his own, leaving just enough so that he can convincingly pretend that Rey _is_ using him as a favorite is usually used.

And with the discovery of his healing abilities, something about the rest of the Force just seems to _click_ for Finn, like the last piece of his armor sliding into place. Suddenly everything Rey describes just seems to make _sense_ , and Finn reaches into the Force and the Force reaches into him and he knows, deep in his bones, that he can do anything he needs to do.

He’s ready, at last, for whatever they will need to do - for the next step on this path, whatever that step might be.

But neither he nor Rey can figure out what that step _is_.

*

The _Imperator_ returns to Starkiller after two years out on patrol, so that General Mimur can be witness the completion of General Hux’s great weapon. Finn is honestly not sure whether that’s a compliment or a not-very-subtle dig against General Mimur; the political games the generals play are not something Finn really has much access to, after all. Even Rey doesn’t know much about them, since not even officers are eager to socialize with Knights of Ren.

The instant he sets foot into Starkiller Base, though, he feels the Force _shiver_ , a dreadful feeling that makes all the short-cropped hair on his head try to stand up straight under his helmet. He glances at Rey, and something in the set of her shoulders tells him that she feels the same thing. Starkiller is _wrong_ , horridly wrong, and the Force wants it gone with a passion that surprises Finn immensely.

But Finn doesn’t really have any time to process that feeling before the Force thrums again, thrums _warning_ , and around the corner Kylo Ren comes stalking, cloak swirling about him. He stops in front of Rey and looks down at her from behind his mask, and Finn concentrates on keeping his mental armor strong and not letting Kylo Ren sense _anything_ strange about him.

“Kaisra,” Kylo Ren says, sounding pleased. “Come with me. I will show you _my_ prize while Hux gloats over his.”

“Of course, Lord Kylo,” Rey says calmly, though Finn can feel, through their bond, her tiny flinch at the word ‘prize.’ Finn is honestly a little surprised by the sheer contempt in Kylo Ren’s voice when he speaks of General Hux, though. Perhaps there’s something in that which can be exploited? But then, Kylo Ren despises everyone.

She and Finn’s squad follow Kylo Ren down through the halls of Starkiller to the cells, deep in the planet’s bowels, and Kylo Ren flings open a door triumphantly. Rey steps in without hesitation. Finn gestures Teener and Easy and Oh-Zero to stand guard outside the door, and follows Rey; if this is a trap, he needs to be beside her.

It’s not a trap, or at least, it’s not a trap for _them_.

There’s a man strapped to an interrogation chair in the center of the room, one so battered and bruised that it takes Finn a long moment’s careful watching to be sure he’s still even _breathing_. His hair is so matted with blood Finn can’t tell what color it was originally, and Finn can’t see a single square inch of skin that isn’t bruised or scraped or bleeding. He’s quite unconscious, which is probably a blessing.

“Poe Dameron,” Kylo Ren gloats. “The best pilot in the Resistance.” He strokes one gloved hand down the captive’s cheek. “Already I have torn from him the location of the map to Skywalker. Soon, I shall know _everything_ about the Resistance, all the secrets he tries so desperately to conceal from me.” He chuckles darkly. Finn shivers. “I think I’ll let him watch as all his little _friends_ are executed, before I kill him, so he knows _exactly_ what he’s done,” Kylo Ren adds.

“A masterful stroke, indeed, Lord Kylo,” Rey says evenly. “I must applaud you.”

“Perhaps tomorrow I will let _you_ watch,” Kylo Ren says, and Rey bows a little.

“If that is what you desire, then of course,” she says, still glacially calm, as her bond with Finn resonates with horror and rage. Kylo Ren nods and whirls, cloak swirling around him, to lead the way out of the cell.

Rey looks at Finn and jerks her head just slightly towards the man in the chair, and Finn nods, just enough to be visible with the helmet on. _There’s_ their ticket to the Resistance.

“Tonight,” Rey says, so softly Finn can barely hear it, and he nods again. Tonight. Tonight, at last, they make their move.

And then, at dinner, while Finn is standing statuelike behind Rey’s chair with Teener at his shoulder, they hear General Hux saying to General Mimur, “...and tomorrow you will see it in action. Supreme Leader Snoke has finally authorized me to strike against the very heart of the New Republic: we will destroy the head of the rathtar, and its tentacles will soon stop writhing.”

“Indeed, I shall look forward to this demonstration,” General Mimur says, and Finn feels Rey’s terrified rage resonating down their bond, knows his own is just as palpable to her. Starkiller must not fire.

She retreats to her rooms as soon as she can do so without causing suspicion, and orders Finn in after her. He yanks his helmet off as soon as the door closes, and falls into her golden eyes and down into the desert. The sand is whirling around them, fear and rage and horror turning the usual peaceful landscape into a storm which, if real, would rend the flesh from Finn’s bones, but there’s a small clear space around the rock which is Rey’s love for Finn, and Finn and Rey shelter in it.

“We have to keep the weapon from firing,” Rey says hoarsely. “But how? I can’t exactly ask Snoke to order Hux _not_ to destroy the New Republic!”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Finn says half-desperately. “I mean, if we could figure out how to blow it up…”

“I got a look at the schematics,” Rey says thoughtfully. “And there was...something…”

“Tell me,” Finn says, and she does.

*

Finn gets no sleep that night, and neither does Rey. He’s never been quite so glad either for the lessons she gave him in how to go unnoticed - well, even more unnoticed than a Stormtrooper _usually_ is - or for the bond between them, which lets them offer each other strength even when they’re at opposite ends of the kriffing _planet_.

Rey is good with machines, and also is a Knight of Ren, so no one is going to bother her even if they _do_ see her in the oscillator at a weird hour. And Finn is the bodyguard of a Knight of Ren, so even without the mind-tricks Rey taught him, no one’s going to argue if he tells the guards on the prisoner’s cell that Kylo Ren wants the prisoner moved.

But there’s so little time, and so much to do. It takes Finn _hours_ to do the hack he needs to on the Stormtrooper comm network, and it takes Rey just as many hours to assemble what she needs. But in the early, early hours of the morning Finn feels Rey’s sudden vast relief radiate through his mind, and he grins to himself behind his helmet as he turns another corner, the dazed prisoner stumbling ahead of him. He doesn’t like to make the prisoner walk, not with the grievous injuries littering his body, but carrying the man would be _entirely_ out of character, and Finn doesn’t dare do anything to attract attention.

Rey meets him at the ship they’ve chosen, just long enough to use her password to override all its other programming and disable its tracker, and Finn guides the prisoner in and gets him into the tiny bacta tank that this ship, like all the officers’ shuttles, is equipped with.

And then Rey and Finn stand there a moment, just looking at each other. If this goes horribly wrong, this might be the last time they see each other, after all. Finn takes his helmet off, dropping it carelessly onto the floor, and Rey wraps her arms around him and hugs him, heedless of the armor between them. Finn hugs back, carefully.

And then Rey pulls away, and goes up on her tiptoes just long enough to press her lips to Finn’s - their first kiss, maybe their last as well - and goes striding regally out of the shuttle, and Finn locks the shuttle door against everyone but her and sits down to wait.

Stormtroopers learn patience early on, but this - this may be the hardest thing he’s ever done.


	5. Chapter 5

Finn has the comm net tuned to the Stormtrooper frequency - it’s one the officers don’t use, though it’s not private, of course, just that the officers mostly don’t _care_ what the Stormtroopers say among themselves, so long as it’s not actively treasonous. But it’s also used for all-hands orders, now and again, when it’s necessary for all of the Stormtroopers to do something as near to simultaneously as possible.

Which is, of course, just what Rey and Finn are planning on.

Hux makes his speech, which goes out over every channel, and Finn listens with bile rising in his throat at the sheer ugliness of Hux’s hatred.

Hux orders the weapon fired.

And there’s a long pause, while Finn waits with bated breath, hands clenched so hard that his knuckles creak, while the weapon charges and charges and the sun grows dimmer and dimmer, and in the back of Finn’s mind Rey grows tenser and tenser. And then, all at once, Finn feels the tension snap, and hears a great rumbling explosion that shakes the entire ship bay - that must shake the entire planet. It’s violent enough that it even wakes up the prisoner in his bacta-bath, and Finn has to scramble across the shuttle to keep the other man from trying to climb out of the tank.

“You’re safe,” Finn tells him, as the other man stares up with wide, uncomprehending dark eyes and struggles weakly against Finn’s strong hand on his shoulder. “You’re _safe_ , Poe Dameron, you’re in a bacta tank, we’re not going to hurt you.”

The man’s name gets through, or possibly he recognizes the smell of bacta, and he stops struggling, though he’s still tense and his eyes are wide and full of fear. Finn doesn’t dare let go of him, and so he’s standing there with one hand covered in bacta, trying to figure out what to say to convince Poe Dameron that he doesn’t actually need to fear Finn - in hindsight, taking off his _armor_ might have helped with that - when he hears the comm crackle and then what _sounds_ like Captain Phasma’s voice, cold and clear, saying, “All Stormtroopers, evacuate the base. All Stormtroopers, I repeat, evacuate.”

Rey _did_ it.

Thank the Force.

...Now they just need to escape.

*

Finn has to let go of Poe Dameron long enough to prep the shuttle for takeoff, but thankfully that one bout of struggling seems to have used up all of the other man’s strength, and he lies there in the bacta tank watching Finn work with wide, terrified eyes, but doesn’t try to move. All around the shuttle, Finn can hear the rumble of Starkiller Base beginning to fall apart - the whole kriffing _planet_ is going to go soon, Finn can feel it in the Force - but he’s not leaving without Rey. If that means he dies here, well, Finn’s been living on borrowed time since he was assigned to Lady Kaisra Ren’s bodyguard. At least he knows she’s still alive and getting closer with every moment.

(He hopes the rest of her bodyguard gets out. He may not be _friends_ with Teener and Easy and Oh-Zero and the rest of them, but they’ve been his comrades for two years, and he’d rather not know he caused their deaths.)

There’s another rumble, even louder and _closer_ than the last, and then the shuttle door flies open and Rey half-tumbles in, slapping the door-close button and vaulting across the tiny space into the pilot’s seat. Finn straps himself down as fast as he can, watching out of the corner of his eye as Poe Dameron braces himself in the bacta tank - thank the Force _he’s_ not going to try anything silly - and then Rey is sending them screeching out of the boat bay just before the ceiling caves in.

She puts them into a tight orbit about the planet - tighter than is maybe safe, but Finn doesn’t object - and they both watch, their hearts in their throats, as the planet begins to fall apart. Cracks appear in the snow-covered ground, so deep that Finn can see the magma in their depths; earthquakes roll across the surface, leaving devastation in their wakes. Ships launch from the surface, officers’ shuttles and troop carriers, arrowing frantically away from the dying planet, and Finn, counting the troop carriers as they lift off, thinks that the evacuation order Rey triggered might actually have been in time to save the vast majority of lives on the base. They may be his enemies now, but the Stormtroopers have been the closest thing to a family Finn’s ever had for his whole life, and if he _can_ avoid killing them wholesale, he’d like to.

And then the planet convulses in yet another cataclysmic earthquake, and Finn sees vast swaths of the base collapse inward on themselves, and Rey takes her hands away from the controls and closes her eyes and _snarls_ , and Finn can feel the sudden burst of effort as she snaps the bonds which tie her to Kylo Ren and Snoke.

With any luck, they’ll think she’s dead now, killed in the destruction of the base. With any luck, they won’t come looking for her.

With any luck, Rey has just set herself free.

She opens her eyes, panting with the effort of breaking the bonds so suddenly, and takes the controls again, sending them shooting away from the planet into the trackless depths of space. They don’t have a real destination yet, other than ‘away’ - but for just now, ‘away’ is quite enough.

‘Away’ means safety, and that sounds pretty good to Finn.

*

They end up in a tiny, nameless system far from pretty much anything, which has one tiny moon with just enough air and water to refill the shuttle’s systems, and nothing else to recommend it. Rey puts them down gently on the moon’s gritty surface, and Finn leaves her to her contemplation of the ship’s systems - she’s making sure there aren’t any _other_ trackers or nasty little surprises hidden in the computers - and goes back to see how their - guest? Prisoner? Rescue-ee? - how _Poe Dameron_ is doing.

But first he strips off his armor and stacks it out of the way. He really can’t blame the Resistance fighter for reacting so badly to the sight of it, and if he’s going to be trying to win Dameron’s trust, even on a very tentative basis, he doesn’t want to start at any more of a disadvantage than he already is.

Dameron is awake, if clearly in quite a lot of pain and _very_ unhappy. Finn can work with that. He sits down next to the bacta tank where Dameron can see him, trying his best not to loom - he’s not actually more than a few centimeters taller or broader than Dameron, but while the Resistance fighter is stuck in a bacta tank _anyone_ is going to look imposing - and tries on his best reassuring smile.

“Hello,” he says. “I’m Finn. This is a rescue.”

“I kinda figured, what with the exploding superweapon and all,” Dameron says, voice hoarse from what Finn suspects is the aftermath of quite a lot of screaming. “Are you with the Resistance?”

Finn shrugs. “Not yet,” he says, quite honestly. “But we’d _like_ to be. Is the Resistance accepting volunteers?”

Dameron chuckles incredulously. “You’re telling me you actually _are_ a Stormtrooper and a Knight of Ren? And you want to switch sides?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Finn agrees. “We figured rescuing the best pilot in the Resistance and blowing up Starkiller might count as proof of our honesty.”

Dameron laughs again, and then gasps and looks like he regrets having done so. He’s almost certainly got cracked or broken ribs, Finn suspects, which would tend to make laughing more painful. “Yeah, okay,” he says “Seems fair.”

“Alright,” Finn says, grinning. “So, second order of business: may I heal you?”

Dameron blinks at him. Finn shrugs. “I’m also a Force-user,” he explains. “I can heal people. I can heal _you_ , if you’ll let me. I bet those ribs are giving you hell.”

Dameron blinks a little more, then rasps a tiny, half-suppressed chuckle. “A Stormtrooper who has the Force,” he says. “Why the hell not. Sure, you can heal me.”

“I’ll have to touch you,” Finn warns. Dameron gestures weakly at his battered torso.

“Go ahead, buddy,” he says. “Do your worst.”

Finn starts with Dameron’s hand, since it’s closest. Half the fingers are broken, and the way Dameron is gripping the edge of the bacta tank must hurt like hell; Finn coaxes his fingers out of their death-grip and cradles the poor broken hand in his own, and reaches out with the Force. This is the first time he’s tried to heal someone who isn’t either Rey or his own self, and it’s a little harder because he doesn’t _know_ Poe Dameron the way he knows Rey or his own body. But Dameron is human, built much like Finn himself in the basic template, and Finn realigns the broken bones and sends the Force surging through them to make them whole again, soothes away the bruises and cuts and regrows a fingernail - ow, ow, ow, that _had_ to hurt, kriff Kylo Ren anyhow - until Dameron’s hand lies smooth and unharmed in Finn’s own.

Dameron raises his hand as soon as Finn lets go, looking in astonishment at the unmarked skin and unbroken fingers. “Holy kriff,” he says softly. “That’s kriffing _amazing_ , buddy.”

Finn smiles. Dameron swears almost as much as Kriffer does, which is strangely adorable. “Your shoulder next,” he says, and reaches into the bacta tank. Dameron holds still, smiling up at Finn in something like awe, as Finn heals the dislocated shoulder and the cracked ribs, the nasty bruises and internal bleeding on Dameron’s abdomen, the bone chip on one femur and the broken toes on the other leg. He moves back up Dameron’s other side, tending to the almost artistic scalpel cuts forming the First Order’s insignia which have been carved into Dameron’s side - he heals those with no trace of a scar, putting a little extra effort into it, so Dameron will never have to see that symbol etched into his own skin - and the broken fingers on the _other_ hand, and then all that is left is the broken nose and black eyes and mostly-clotted head injury.

Dameron meets Finn’s eyes without any fear as Finn scoots a little closer and leans over the tank. “Go on,” he says quietly, encouragingly, and Finn lifts bacta-dripping fingers to realign Dameron’s broken nose, brush the bruises from his eyes, and seal the head injury into a thin white scar that will be easily hidden in Dameron’s thick hair.

And then he stands and offers Dameron a hand out of the tank.

Dameron comes out dripping with bacta, but the floor is easily cleaned - this part of the shuttle is mostly bare metal for just such occasions - and there’s a tiny sonic shower just behind the tank, which Dameron heads for immediately. Finn grabs a cloth and sops up the spilled bacta, and by the time Dameron emerges, clean and hale, from the sonic, the rest of the shuttle looks as pristine as if a squad had just finished cleaning it.

Rey looks up from where she’s bent over the control panel to nod a wary greeting to their guest. “I’m...Rey,” she says, the first time she’s said her name aloud in _years_ , and Finn beams at her.

“Thank you, Rey, Finn, for rescuing me,” Dameron replies. “I’m Poe, and it is a genuine _pleasure_ to meet you both.”

*

Poe eats about three days’ worth of rations and then collapses onto a bunk and falls instantly into what Finn recognizes as a deep and healing sleep, and Finn joins Rey up in the cockpit to discuss where they go from here. They didn’t really expect this to work so well - didn’t expect the explosion to take out the whole _planet_ , didn’t expect the snapping of Rey’s Force-bonds to be so simple, didn’t expect the Resistance prisoner to be so cooperative and _friendly_.

Frankly, they both expected to be dead by this point in the proceedings, and are more than a little surprised to find that they aren’t.

“We won’t know where to go until Dameron tells us,” Rey says at last, as Finn stifles another yawn. “And _you_ exhausted yourself healing him. Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“Yes, Rey,” Finn says, hauling himself out of his chair, and then dares to lean down and press his lips very gently to hers. Their second kiss. It’s as sweet and perfect as he could desire.

And then he passes out on the second bunk, and even his carefully-trained internal alarm clock can’t wake him until he’s recovered from healing an entire set of near-fatal injuries all in a go. In retrospect, maybe he should have done some triage, taken his time. But Finn can’t bring himself to regret it, not when it wiped the teeth-gritted look of pain from Poe’s face and replaced it with that wide and joyful smile.

*

When Finn wakes, Poe is sitting in the cockpit and Rey is sacked out on the other bunk. Poe turns and grins when he hears Finn move, and holds out a wrapped ration bar. “You feeling better, buddy?”

Finn crosses the tiny patch of floorspace to slump down in the other chair and takes the ration bar. “Much, thank you,” he says, and eats the whole bar in three bites, even though it’s his least favorite flavor. Poe hands him another one.

“Thank _you_ ,” he says. “I feel like a new man. That is one kriffing _wonderful_ skill-set you’ve got, Finn buddy, and I owe you my life.”

Finn shrugs and gestures dismissal, then realizes that Poe probably won’t know Stormtrooper finger-talk. “It was necessary,” he says instead. “You’re the only person in this shuttle who knows how to find the Resistance, after all.”

“She doesn’t?” Poe asks, clearly startled, and Finn shrugs.

“We’d be on our way already if she did,” he says. “Hux knows - knew, hopefully, if we _did_ manage to blow him up with the planet, but I’m not going to bet on that. But he didn’t tell Rey.” He flicks his fingers - _irritation with officers_ , a sign every ‘trooper knows but rarely uses, just in case - and adds, “She was the youngest of the Knights. I guess he thought she didn’t need to know.”

“Kriffing need-to-know,” Poe sighs. “Well. I _do_ know where the Resistance base is. But first, we need to go to Jakku.”

Finn startles, badly shocked. “Jakku? Why?”

“I left my droid there,” Poe says, “and it’s got something I need - something the _Resistance_ needs.”

“Well,” says Finn, still blinking away his surprise, “we’ll go to Jakku, then. When Rey wakes up.”

Poe nods, glancing over at Rey’s sleeping form. She’s got her quarterstaff in her hands, clinging to it even in her sleep, but she looks young - terrifyingly young - and the scar on her face is even more jarring than it usually is. Finn wonders suddenly if he could heal it, even now so long after it was made. He’ll ask her if she wants him to try.

“So...how did a Knight of Ren and a Stormtrooper end up together?” Poe asks after a minute, clearly very curious but trying hard not to insult Finn by accident.

“I was assigned to her bodyguard,” Finn replies easily. “And then I was the only one who could spar with her without dying. So we spent a lot of time together, and she discovered I was Force-sensitive, and, well,” he shrugs. “Here we are.”

“That was a lot of history in one little phrase,” Poe says, amused. “But okay. Here you are. And you want to join the Resistance.”

It’s not a question, but Finn knows what Poe _wants_ to ask. He takes a deep breath.

“Rey’s story isn’t mine to tell,” he says quietly. “But - do you know how the First Order gets Stormtroopers?”

“...You’re volunteers, right?” Poe asks, suddenly looking very worried.

Finn snorts in bitter laughter. “No,” he says flatly. “We’re taken as infants, and raised to know nothing but obedience. We’re _slaves_ , Poe Dameron. That armor is nothing but a slave collar. We’re stolen children, trained to kill without thinking and die without hesitation.”

Poe has gone slightly green. “Kriff,” he breathes. “We - we didn’t know. I _swear_ to you, we didn’t know.”

Finn shrugs, gestures dismissal. “I didn’t think you did,” he replies. “Why would you? No one cares about Stormtroopers - not the officers, not the Resistance. We’re just helmets and blasters, interchangeable. Decommission one, bring another one out of the cadet pool.”

“Well, now I feel like an absolute pile of bantha shit,” Poe says, grinning crookedly. “But - now I know. And when we tell Leia - the General, General Organa - she’ll change our tactics. We’ll start going for the officers, start offering truce to the Stormtroopers, something like that. I promise, once we tell her, she won’t ignore this, Finn. _I_ won’t ignore it.”

Finn looks at Poe for a long time, reaches out with the Force to taste Poe’s sincerity. “I believe you,” he says at last. “Is - they told us General Organa was ten feet tall and breathed fire, pretty much. Is she that scary?”

Poe grins more broadly, settles back in the chair and shrugs. “She’s about yay high,” he says, holding his hand about shoulder-height off the floor. “No fire-breathing, I promise. She did kill a Hutt with her own slave chain once, though.”

Finn finds himself smiling. “Really?” he asks, and Poe apparently needs no more encouragement than that to launch into the tale.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey wakes up just as Poe is getting to the good part, with General Leia Organa strangling the Hutt who enslaved her with the chain he used to bind her, and Finn sees her sit up out of the corner of his eye, curl her arms around her knees and listen wide-eyed as Poe gestures enthusiastically, drawing the story out of thin air. Poe is a good storyteller, and Finn can feel Rey’s amusement and quiet pleasure radiating down their bond, as he’s sure she can feel his.

“So,” Finn says when the story’s over, turning to grin at Rey, “apparently we need to go to Jakku.”

Rey startles, and her shock echoes down the bond between them, but she gets control of herself pretty fast - faster than Finn did, anyhow. “Oh?” she asks, uncurling from the bunk and crossing to the cockpit. Finn gets out of the pilot’s chair so she can slide into it, and watches her long fingers dance over the controls as the shuttle lifts off.

“Something about a droid with some valuable information,” Finn says, and Poe chuckles.

“Precisely,” he agrees.

“Well,” Rey says. “Alright then.” She gives Finn a golden, searing glance, and then punches Jakku’s coordinates in by memory and sends the shuttle streaking into hyperspace without a flinch.

“So,” says Poe carefully once they’re on their way, “do I get to ask why Jakku means something to you two?”

“Not now,” Rey says shortly. “Maybe someday.”

“Alright,” Poe says, and nods, and drops it. Finn’s estimation of the man goes up another notch.

*

They put down at Niima Outpost, that being pretty much the only civilization on the planet, and Rey steps out of the shuttle and stands there on the sand looking around for a long, long moment. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “While we’re here, we should trade the shuttle in for something a little less recognizable.”

Behind her, Poe makes a strangled sound, and Finn turns to look at the other man, who is staring across the ersatz landing field with an expression of sheer disbelief. “Can we trade it for _that_ one?” he asks, a very strange note of longing in his voice.

Rey turns to look where he’s pointing, and then gives Poe a very dubious look. “That piece of junk?”

“That ‘piece of junk’ is the _Millennium Falcon_ , I’d stake my ship on it,” Poe hisses, glancing around like he doesn’t want anyone else to hear, though there’s no one near enough to be a problem anyhow. Finn is pretty sure that’s his doing: he may not be wearing his armor anymore, but he _looks_ like a bodyguard, blaster easy in his hands as he scans his surroundings. The few inhabitants of the Outpost who get close enough to get a good look at him back off pretty fast.

Rey says, “That was...General Solo’s ship, then, from the last war?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Poe says, practically vibrating with excitement. “It did the Kessel run in twelve parsecs! It was General Organa’s base of operations! It’s practically _living history_!”

“It’s still a piece of junk,” Rey says skeptically. “But we’ll see. This way. The man we want is called Unkar Plutt, or was the last I knew. He runs the trading post. If anyone’s found your droid, he’ll know about it. And he can do a ship trade, too.” She pauses, and then adds, “And if he tries to cheat us, I think I’ll kill him slowly.”

“Alright,” Finn says. “Tell me if you need any help.”

Poe makes a small protesting noise, and Rey gives him a golden-eyed glance that shuts him up completely. Finn smiles. Rey is pulling on Lady Kaisra like a cloak, and even though he knows it’s a disguise, he finds her a little intimidating; to Poe, who _doesn’t_ know that Rey is tense as a coiled wire inside, shaking with memories and remembered rage and sorrow, she must be terrifying.

Niima Outpost is dingy and dusty, full of battered goods and even more battered people. Rey stalks through it like a predator, Finn on her heels with his blaster easy in his hand, Poe trailing them both, and when she reaches the trading post in the center of the outpost the people in line scatter before her without hesitation.

The Crolute in the trading post rears back in his chair as Rey approaches, though he must be twice, maybe three times her size, but Rey fixes him with her golden glare and he doesn’t try to close the shutters or flee, just sits there shaking as she looks him up and down.

“Unkar Plutt,” she says at last.

“Yes, ah, your ladyship,” Plutt says, giving her what Finn suspects Plutt thinks is an ingratiating smile.

“I am looking for a droid,” Rey says evenly, not bothering to tell Plutt her name.

“I have several!” Plutt says immediately. “Let me bring them out for you!”

Rey slashes a hand through the air, stopping him mid-movement. “A _specific_ droid,” she says. “Astromech. Orange and white.”

“Ah,” says Plutt, and looks at Rey’s golden eyes and black robes, looks past her at the First Order shuttle sitting on the sand, and gulps. “Yes, of course,” he says. “I have that droid. Just a moment, please, your ladyship.”

Rey leans on her quarterstaff, the picture of temporary patience, as Plutt picks up a comm and barks orders into it. Scant minutes later, three bulky nonhumans so wrapped up in concealing garments that Finn can’t even begin to guess what species they’re from come stumbling out from a nearby warehouse, dragging a bundle behind them. They deposit it in front of Rey and pull the sacking away, to reveal a little astromech droid, orange and white and spherical, which whistles with indignation and then spots Poe. Finn sees Poe’s hand move in a swift, silent command, and the droid falls silent; no one else seems to have noticed.

“Yes, that one,” Rey says evenly. “And the Corellian freighter, I’ll take that. It is a prize the Supreme Leader will be pleased to have. You may have the shuttle.”

“Ah - yes, your ladyship,” Plutt stammers. “The Corellian freighter, of course. A pleasure doing business with you.”

Rey gives him another long golden-eyed glare, and turns, snapping her fingers at the droid. It rolls after her, and Finn falls into place at her right shoulder, Poe closing the diamond. No one gets in their way - it feels like no one so much as _breathes_ as Rey leads the way up the ramp of the freighter and Poe goes scurrying submissively ahead of her, very much the intimidated First Order pilot trying not to annoy the woman who holds his life in her hands.

Finn stands in the doorway until the ramp is closed, looking out at the Outpost and glowering as well as he can. It’s not an expression he’s practiced much - Stormtroopers don’t usually need to glower. That’s what the helmets are for.

Once the ramp is closed, though, he heads up to the cockpit and finds Rey piloting while Poe and his droid carry on what certainly sounds like a conversation, the droid’s beeping full of enthusiasm and relief, Poe down on his knees patting the droid all over as he babbles joyfully. It’s sort of cute.

“Guys, this is BB-8,” Poe says after a few minutes, scrambling up off his knees with a smile on his face that transforms his normally handsome features into sheer glory. “Beebee, these are Rey and Finn. They rescued me.”

BB-8 whirls in a little circle of what sure looks like glee, and beeps something very enthusiastic at Finn, who chuckles in surprise and delight. “Hey there, little fella,” he says, getting down on one knee to look the droid in the video sensor. “Poe’s been worried about you.”

Finn’s pretty sure the flurry of beeps translates roughly as _I was pretty damn worried about him, too!_ , especially given how Poe chuckles ruefully and pats his droid on its little dome-head.

And then something in the back of the ship goes _bang_ , which Finn is pretty sure is a bad noise, and Rey shoots up out of the pilot’s seat and _vaults_ over Finn on her way back towards the noise. “Keep an eye out for trouble!” she yells back over her shoulder, and Finn half-tumbles into her vacated seat as Poe goes shooting down the corridor after her.

Finn keeps his eyes on the sensors and his ears pricked for any hint of what’s going on behind him: a lot of swearing, at the moment, in two voices - Poe can swear _almost_ as vituperatively as Rey can - interspersed with demands for incomprehensible tools. The feel of Rey through their bond is tense but not _frightened_ , so Finn figures they’re not going to explode in the immediate future.

There’s another bout of really _inventive_ swearing, and some worried beeping from BB-8, and then a long pause, and then, finally, an overwhelming feeling of relief echoing down from Rey’s end of their bond. Finn relaxes. “All good back there, then?” he yells over his shoulder, eyes still on the sensors.

“All good,” Poe replies, sounding equal parts amused and relieved. “Got a genius mechanic in your lady here.”

Finn chuckles. He knew Rey was good with machines - it came up, now and again, during their long chats in her mindscape or his - but repairing a spaceship on the fly is more than “good,” and he sends his awe and wonder down the link to her, grins to himself at her bubbling joy and pride. She comes trotting back up the passageway and Finn surrenders his chair to her gratefully, Poe sliding into the copilot’s seat.

“So, where to next?” Rey asks Poe. “The Resistance?”

“Yeah,” Poe says, and his fingers flicker over the controls, setting a course. Finn settles down onto one of the couches in the main room, leaning back against the bulkhead and letting himself sink into meditation. They won’t need him for a while, and he wants to spend a few hours listening to the Force sing. It’s been two days since he meditated, and that is _far_ too long.

*

“Welcome to the Ileenium system, buddies,” Poe says, and Finn blinks himself out of meditation and rolls to his feet. The system outside the viewscreen doesn’t look like much - a couple of planets, a couple of moons - but presumably that’s the point; the Resistance would hardly set up somewhere _obvious_. Poe flicks the comm on, tuning it to a channel Finn assumes is the Resistance’s usual, and says, “Commander Dameron reporting for duty - permission to land?”

There is a long silence. Poe starts to look worried. “Commander Dameron reporting,” he says again, and then rattles off a long string of what Finn assumes is code. Finn moves across the room to lean on Rey’s chair, staring out at the little nondescript green planet below them.

There’s still no answer. “Take us in lower,” Poe says, sounding _very_ worried, and Rey does, bringing the _Falcon_ in low and slow over the surface of the planet. They’re about halfway across the main continent when they see it: a gaping hole in the planet’s surface, the entrance to a cave complex which has been blown open with no regard for what - or _who_ \- might have been in the way.

Poe makes a tiny, wounded noise. Rey glances over at him, then takes the _Falcon_ down, gently, to the debris-littered plain in front of what Finn assumes _was_ , up until fairly recently, the Resistance base.

Really the only question in Finn’s mind just now is whether the First Order got here before or after the Resistance evacuated. If it was _before_ , then…

Then they’re kind of kriffed.

*

Poe leads the way into the shattered base, BB-8 right on his heels and making tiny unhappy warbling noises that make Finn want to pat the poor thing on its little dome-head and promise everything will be alright. But he _can’t_ make that promise. If the Stormtroopers got here before the Resistance could get out, the _kindest_ thing that could have happened to the people BB-8 is worried about would have been a quick death.

But there aren’t any bodies at all lying among the rubble, and Finn starts to hope that maybe General Organa’s infamous luck has held out, and she got her people off this planet before the First Order’s troop carriers appeared in its sky. The First Order wouldn’t have taken the dead - their own, yes, because armor is valuable, but not their enemies’ - so hopefully that means there _weren’t_ any dead.

Rey says, softly enough that Finn thinks Poe won’t hear, “Even if they got away, how the kriff are we supposed to _find_ them?”

“No idea,” Finn replies, just as softly. “We’ll think of something.”

Rey nods. “We’ll think of something,” she agrees, and bumps her shoulder against Finn’s in comfort and companionship.

Poe leads them through the whole base, and they find crumbled walls and blocked-off passageways and rooms scarred with blaster fire but no bodies, no people, no sign that the destruction was anything more than whichever officer was in charge of this mission venting his fury at not finding the Resistance in their abandoned base. There _are_ signs, though, that the Resistance left in a hurry: plates still scattered over the mess hall tables, bits of clothing hanging in closets here and there, a bunk still half-made in a barracks. Clearly the Resistance didn’t have _much_ warning before their enemies arrived. Enough, but not much more than that. Poe collects the scattered detritus of his comrades’ flight, a shirt here, a boot there; Finn’s not sure what he’s planning to do with all of that, but it’s none of Finn’s business really.

And then, in what must have been the command room - the holoprojector smashed but still recognizable, the hoverchairs broken and scattered across the floor - under a crumbled wall, Poe finds a defunct astromech droid. Actually, BB-8 finds it: goes whirring across the room, beeping at the top of its speakers, to rock back and forth in front of its mangled comrade. Poe drops his little pile of scraps and hurries across to his droid, dropping to his knees to see the damage.

“Buddies,” he says over his shoulder, “a little help?”

Finn and Rey shrug at each other and cross the room, skirting carefully around the broken hoverchairs and shards of durasteel. “Is this droid important?” Rey asks, as Finn Force-lifts the rubble off of it, carefully, one ragged-edged chunk at a time, and piles the pieces off to one side out of the way.

“It might be,” Poe says. “I - it might be. It shouldn’t have been left behind, but it was unresponsive, it would’ve been easy to forget if they were in a hurry.”

Rey bends down to look at the crushed feet on the droid’s left side. “I can fix this,” she says after a moment. “The _Falcon_ has the tools I’ll need.” She straightens, shrugging. “If you think it’s important, we’ll bring it with us, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything else here.”

“We can raid the pantry, see if they left any food packs,” Poe says. “But then, yeah, I think - I think that’s about all we’re going to find.”

Finn levitates the droid out to the _Falcon_ while Poe and Rey head for the kitchens; he’s just gotten the poor broken thing tucked into a corner when his companions return, laden with ration packs. Finn is pretty sure Resistance ration packs won’t be any better than the First Order kind, but anything’s better than starving, after all.

“Let’s get out of here,” Poe says hoarsely, and Rey takes them up and out of the system, skips the ship easily through hyperspace in a couple of random hops until Finn’s pretty sure even the best tracker would have trouble keeping up with them, and pauses again in a system which has no habitable planets at all, just an enormous gas giant orbiting the sun in solitary splendor.

“So,” she says, turning to Poe, “where do we go from here?”


	7. Chapter 7

There’s a long pause, while Finn watches the enormous storm on the gas giant spin and wonders if the Outer Rim is large enough for them to get lost in and wait to see whether the First Order or the New Republic wins this war - while the _Resistance_ might accept a defecting Knight of Ren and her Stormtrooper apprentice, he’s pretty sure the _New Republic_ would attempt to stick him and Rey right into a jail cell, and while he’s pretty sure no jail cell the New Republic has could actually _hold_ them, it would doubtless be unpleasant and then they’d be on the run again.

Poe sighs. “Alright,” he says quietly. “I told you Beebee had something of value to the Resistance.”

“...Yes,” Rey says, curiously. Finn blinks. What could the little droid have that could be of use to them? Surely it would have said something if it knew where they should go.

“It’s got the map to Luke Skywalker,” Poe says.

Rey’s jaw drops. Finn’s not doing much better. Luke Skywalker? Luke Skywalker, who killed the Emperor _and_ the invincible Darth Vader? Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi, who every Stormtrooper is taught to fear? Luke Skywalker, brother to the infamous General Organa, student of the equally infamous (but thankfully _dead_ ) Obi-Wan Kenobi? _That_ Luke Skywalker?

“ _Skywalker?_ ” Rey says faintly. Finn can feel her shock and apprehension echoing down their bond, and knows he’s radiating exactly the same emotions back at her. “You want us to go find _Luke Skywalker?_ ”

“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Poe says, a little apologetically. “He’d be able to find Leia and the Resistance easily enough - she’s said so, now and again, that their bond means he can find her anywhere - and that’d give us another Force-user on our side, too. And he could vouch for you, probably - he’d be able to tell if you were planning to betray us.”

Rey grimaces and glances up at Finn, who shrugs uncomfortably. “Fair,” he says. “I mean, there’s only our word for it that we’re really defecting. And you know those bastards _would_ give up at least a _fake_ Starkiller to cement a cover like this one. If Skywalker could prove we meant it, though…”

“Ugh,” Rey says, but she nods. “Alright, let’s see this map.”

“Beebee, you’re up, buddy,” Poe says, swinging around in his chair. The little droid chirps and whirls until it’s pointing its tiny holoprojector straight up, and as the three humans watch eagerly, a map springs into being above them, stars and planets gleaming blue.

They all stare at it for a while. And then Poe says, sounding so dejected that Finn wants to pat him soothingly on the head, “It’s a _fragment_.”

“Well,” Rey says, looking at the scrap of map which does them absolutely no good at all. “That’s...I need to do something else before I actually get mad. Finn, you keep watch.” She stands in a swirl of black robes - Finn sees Poe shrink back against his chair in sudden fear - and goes striding off down the corridor, the broken astromech they took from the Resistance base floating behind her. “I’m going to fix it!” she calls back over her shoulder. “Don’t bother me!”

Finn sends a wave of affection and reassurance after her and sinks down into her abandoned chair, keeping his hands carefully away from the controls. Stormtroopers don’t get flight training - he has no idea what half of those buttons even _do_. He can only do pre-flight checks because Rey insisted he learn, and even Lady Kaisra Ren wouldn’t have been able to convince the officers to allow a Stormtrooper actual pilot’s training.

“She won’t hurt you,” he says to Poe, who’s still looking shaken. “Rey’s not - not like _them_.”

“My head knows that,” Poe says, giving Finn a weak little grin and patting BB-8 on the dome as the little droid nudges against his knee. “The rest of me just needs a little time to catch up.”

Finn shrugs. “That’s fair,” he agrees.

“Hey now, Beebee, not your fault, buddy,” Poe adds soothingly to his droid. “You did a great job, keeping that safe for us. We’ll figure it out. _You_ were perfect.”

“He’s right,” Finn agrees, glad to see the droid starting to perk back up. For a ball, it’s got pretty expressive body language. “You did everything right, you kept that safe even when you were captured by Plutt. You’re very brave. It’s not your fault it’s a fragment.”

BB-8 beeps something that sounds grateful and rolls forward to bump gently against Finn’s knee, so Finn pats it softly. “You’re a good partner to Poe,” he tells it solemnly. “How’d you two get to work together, anyhow?”

BB-8 whirls in a happy circle and burbles gleefully, then nudges Poe’s leg, and Poe laughs. “Alright, alright, I’ll tell it,” he says. “So, years ago, there I was, young and stupid - yes, Beebee, sometimes I’m _still_ stupid, I know - and I was running a mission all by myself on this backwater planet, no backup, just luck and my blaster to keep me safe…”

*

Rey comes back hours later with the repaired droid floating along behind her, and tucks it back into its corner before coming over to curl up on Finn’s lap. “Sorry I scared you,” she says to Poe.

“Actually, I think that helped a lot,” Poe says, surprising both of them. “You got angry, and you went off and repaired something - that’s not terrifying at all. I just need to make sure there’s always something around for you to tinker with, and,” he offers them a crooked grin, “with a ship this old and battered, there’s _always_ going to be something that needs repair work. It may be a classic, but I have to admit this old sweetheart has seen better days.”

Rey giggles. “Yeah, she has, but she’s got good bones,” she agrees. “I was dubious, but I think she’ll do well by us.”

“I mean, I probably would have begged to take her _anyway_ ,” Poe admits, grinning wider. “Just as a piece of history. But she _is_ well made, and if we treat her well I think she’ll be good to us.”

“You realize you’re both talking about a ship like it’s a person?” Finn asks, amused.

“She _is_ ,” they say in unison, and then burst into surprised and delighted laughter while Finn buries his face in Rey’s long brown hair and sighs.

“Alright,” Poe says, once they’ve stopped laughing, “I’m...honestly not sure where we go from here. The fragment is only useful if we have the _rest_ of the map to Luke Skywalker -”

The repaired droid, in its corner, beeps. All three humans startle and turn to stare at it as it trundled out into the center of the room, BB-8 whirling in gleeful circles around it. It halts and burbles to itself for a while - Finn can feel Rey’s amusement at whatever it’s saying, and resolves to learn Droid as soon as possible - and then, without any further ceremony, projects a holomap into the air.

A holomap with a single missing piece.

BB-8 chirps happily, whirls in a little circle, and projects the map fragment into place. For a little while, all the humans stare at the completed map, and then Rey says, “So. We’re off to find Skywalker after all, I guess.”

“I guess so,” Poe says a little faintly.

“Alright,” Rey says, and wriggles around in Finn’s lap until she can reach the controls, tapping in their course with swift fingers. Finn sits there looking at the completed map, knowing, deep in his bones, that his life is about to change irrevocably, again, as surely as it did when he became Lady Kaisra Ren’s bodyguard.

Hopefully Luke Skywalker is not as terrifying as Rey was then.

*

Luke Skywalker has apparently holed up on a tiny island on a planet full of tiny islands; it’s beautiful, but Finn thinks he might get rock fever if he has to stay on a spit of land no larger than a ‘trooper barracks for very long. Skywalker’s island has a flight of steps leading up it, at least, which is something. They leave the droids - neither droid really looks like steps would agree with it - and head up together, Rey in the lead by mutual unspoken agreement. It’s a long climb, and all of them are panting by the end of it, though Finn and Rey, at least, are used to regular hard physical exertion; if Luke Skywalker does this climb regularly, well, Finn’s estimation of the man has just gone up a notch.

And there _is_ someone waiting for them across the grassy field, someone in a gray hooded cloak who stands with his back to them, looking out over the endless ocean. Rey and Finn and Poe glance at each other dubiously, and then Poe gets what Finn can only call a mischievous smile on his face and steps forward. As the hooded man turns around, Poe stretches out his hands in supplication.

“Help us, Luke Skywalker,” he says solemnly. “You’re our only hope.”

The hooded man - Luke Skywalker, it _must_ be him - bursts into laughter. Rey and Finn exchange a confused glance. And then Skywalker says, seemingly to the empty air, “You didn’t have to _shout_.”

“...Sir?” Poe asks, sounding just as baffled as Finn feels, which is something.

“Come, all of you; I have been expecting you,” Skywalker says, putting back his hood and smiling at them from behind a really remarkable beard. “Will you share a meal with me before we leave?”

“You mean - you _are_ coming with us?” Poe says, delighted.

Skywalker chuckles again, and beckons them all to follow him towards a small stone building up against the cliff face. “Many years ago, the Force told me to wait here until there should come a sign that it was time for me to return to the fight,” he says. Rey and Finn exchange another glance. “I must say, though,” Skywalker adds, “that I would have accepted a less... _blatant_ sign. Two Force-users and a man I knew when he was a child, showing up in Han’s old ship with _my_ old droid, and quoting my sister’s words to me - really now, doesn’t that seem a bit much to you?”

Poe laughs in delight. “Well, when you put it like that, sir, _yes_ , it sort of does.”

“Please, call me Luke, all of you,” Skywalker says cheerfully. “And welcome to my home.”

Skywalker’s home is tiny and sparsely furnished, but the meal waiting for them on the low stone table is _not_ ration packs, so Finn decides to like Skywalker until further notice. They settle around the table and Skywalker urges them to help themselves - “After all,” he says, “much of this won’t travel well, and there’s no point in wasting it.” So Finn and Rey take generous portions of roasted bird and stewed grains and fruit, and sit with their shoulders touching as they eat. Only when all the food is gone does Skywalker sit back and give them an assessing look.

“So,” he says. “Tell me, if you would, what you are called, and what brings a Dark-Side Force-user and her _Light-Side_ apprentice to my doorstep.”

Rey and Finn glance at each other in surprise, and then Rey shrugs and says, “I’m Rey; he’s Finn. We’ve left the First Order, and we want to join the Resistance, but we don’t know where they are. Poe said you could find them.” She pauses, and then adds, “Is that why he can heal and I can’t? Because he’s Light?”

“Precisely,” Skywalker says, nodding approvingly. “Healing is a power which, sadly, only the Light allows. But there are powers which the Dark grants access to, as well, which those of the Light cannot touch.”

Finn nods; he and Rey have learned that there are _definitely_ things she can do that he can’t. It doesn’t bother Finn.

“Normally,” Skywalker adds, sounding puzzled, “those of the Dark and those of the Light despise each other on sight. But you are - clearly master and apprentice, and as clearly hold great affection for each other, the bond between you stronger than I have ever seen.”

Finn shrugs; Rey spreads her hands wordlessly. “Maybe we’re something new,” Finn suggests after a long, silent moment. “Or maybe it’s just that Rey’s _Dark_ , sure, but she’s not evil. I - I know evil when I see it, and Rey isn’t.”

“So do I, and you are quite correct,” Skywalker says thoughtfully. “Dark but not evil. An interesting conundrum.” He inclines his head politely to Rey. “I would be honored to...advise either of you, should you have questions about the Force.”

“I don’t need a teacher,” Rey says sharply.

“I don’t mean to be one,” Skywalker replies evenly. “Those days are long behind me. But if you have questions, I will answer.”

Rey’s shoulders relax a little. “Alright,” she says, and Finn can feel her tentative relief through their bond. “That...that works. I’ll ask, if I have questions.”

“Very good,” Skywalker says, smiling behind his beard. “Now. It has been a long time since I saw the inside of the _Millennium Falcon_ , or since I spoke with Artoo, for that matter. Shall we be on our way?”

*

“So,” Rey says, fingers hovering over the control panel, as Finn leans comfortably against the back of her chair and Poe twitches eagerly in the copilot’s seat and Skywalker lounges on the couch in the main room, his metal hand stroking endlessly over his droid’s dome, “where are we going?”

“Ah,” says Skywalker, and Finn glances back to see him close his eyes; the Force glows brighter around him, and then Skywalker sighs and puts his flesh hand over his face in - regret? Sorrow?

“She lives, and is well,” he says quietly. “But she has hidden herself with the Force, that none of her blood may find her.”

Finn and Rey blink at each other in confusion, but it’s Poe who says, sounding utterly baffled, “ _Why?_ She was _looking_ for you - why wouldn’t she want you to be able to find _her?_ ”

Skywalker’s sigh is definitely one of sorrow now. “I am not the only Force-user of her blood,” he says at last.

Poe frowns. “There was Ben,” he says at last. “I remember him - he was about my age, and we played together now and then when Leia was visiting my parents. But Ben died with the other students of your school - didn’t he?”

There’s an unpleasantly long pause, and then Poe says again, very softly, “Didn’t he?”

“No,” Skywalker replies, just as quietly. “And yes. The boy Ben Solo died that day, and he who was my sister’s son now calls himself Kylo Ren, and forswears all allegiance to the Light.”

Poe makes a tiny, bitten-off sound of pain and fear, and though Rey’s expression doesn’t change, Finn can feel her sudden surge of rage and terror. He puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, his own mind boggling. _Kylo Ren_ , the Knight that even the _officers_ think is too cruel and capricious to be trusted with Stormtrooper bodyguards, was once General Organa’s _son_?

Finn takes a deep breath, and glances from Poe - lost in terrible memory, his hands white-knuckled on the armrests of his chair - to Rey - staring blankly out the viewscreen, trembling just slightly with remembered pain and fury - and clears his throat. “So, we can’t find the Resistance _that_ way,” he say. “But you know General Organa well, si - Luke. Where would she have gone?”

Skywalker says, slowly, “If I know my sister, she would have taken advantage of one of the old Rebellion bases - she has seen to it that they are kept supplied, and their locations concealed, in case of just such a disaster. And there’s one not far from here.”

“Then let’s go there,” Rey says, voice tightly controlled, and Finn rubs her shoulder gently as she taps in the coordinates Skywalker rattles off. As soon as they’re in hyperspace, she turns to Poe, who is still sitting like a statue in the copilot’s chair, hands gripping the armrests so hard it _has_ to hurt.

“He’s _not here_ ,” she says, sharply, and Poe startles at the Force in her voice. Finn glances at Rey and gets her nod of approval, then moves quickly to kneel at Poe’s feet, not looming over him or caging him in, and gently pries first one hand and then the other from the armrests, coaxing Poe’s fingers from their clenched stiffness.

“We got you out,” he reminds Poe gently, meeting Poe’s dark eyes steadily. “We won’t let them have you again, either. The next time either of us sees Kylo Ren - assuming he made it out of Starkiller alive - well, I know Rey wants his balls for earrings, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him dead myself.”

Poe rallies enough to chuckle weakly. “They’d make very bad earrings,” he says, voice wavering but determinedly cheerful. “Messy.”

“And I’d have to pierce my ears,” Rey agrees, and Finn can feel the lightening of her mood. “Hardly worth it for such pitiful decorations.”

Poe shakes his head, chuckling more heartily now, and squeezes Finn’s hands in thanks. “I suppose I should pity Kylo Ren, then, since I can’t imagine he’s going to have a long and pleasant life with _you_ two out for his head, but I can’t quite manage to. Guess I’m just not cut out for the infinite compassion of the Jedi.” His smile is crooked but real.

“Pfeh,” says Rey, shrugging. “Infinite compassion is all well and good, I suppose, but as far as I’m concerned the only good enemy is a dead one, and I shall see Snoke and Kylo Ren dead at my feet before I die.”

Finn levers himself back to his feet and grins at her. “So you will,” he agrees. He may, according to Skywalker, be of the Light, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to let his enemies go on being enemies forever. The galaxy will be a better place without the Supreme Leader and the Master of the Knights of Ren still tainting its song with Darkness.

*

There is a battered, battle-scarred shuttle just outside the entrance to the base Skywalker recommended; it’s not a First Order ship, but that doesn’t mean it’s friendly. Finn’s got a blaster in hand as their little group pads quietly down the entrance corridor, and so does Poe; Rey has her staff, one finger trembling on the release which will send lightsaber blades sprouting from each end of it. But the entrance corridor is empty of anyone, friend or foe, and they pass through three echoing, empty rooms before they hear any sign of life at all.

What they hear, somewhat to Finn’s surprise, is a warbling basso yowl that somehow manages to combine frustration, immense concern, and irritation in equal measure. Finn and Poe glance at each other in confusion, but Skywalker, the only one of them without a weapon, slaps a hand to his forehead and says, seemingly to thin air, “Really now? _Really?_ That’s just uncalled for, you know. I already got the message.”

And then, while Rey and Finn and Poe are all still gaping at him, Skywalker steps forward between Rey and Finn and calls down the corridor, “Hey, Chewie! Did Han lose his ship again?”

There’s a warble that certainly sounds confused, and then an _enormous_ humanoid covered in long brown fur comes striding out into the corridor. Finn recognizes it, after a moment’s baffled startlement, as a Wookiee; Poe, beside him, breathes, “Chewbacca!” in a tone that sounds like awe.

The Wookiee startles visibly when it sees Skywalker, and then gathers him up in an embrace that Skywalker returns enthusiastically. They’re both babbling, and Finn and Rey exchange a glance of confusion. But hey, at least the Wookiee appears to be friendly. That’s something.

“These are Rey and Finn and Poe Dameron,” Skywalker says finally, as the Wookiee finally lets go of him. “My friends, this is Chewbacca. He and Han Solo _used_ to own the ship you’re currently flying.”

Chewbacca says something startled, and Skywalker nods. “Yep, the _Falcon_ turned back up. I swear, if the Force gives me any more signs that I’m supposed to get back into the fight, I may scream. It really isn’t subtle.”

Chewbacca says something else, waving one enormous hand behind him at the room he came out of, and Skywalker winces. “He is? Shit. I’ll see what I can do.” He hurries into the room, Finn and Rey and Poe on his heels, and then they all stop dead at the sight of the man on the bed.

Finn’s seen people hit by blaster fire before. It’s never pretty. But he’s never seen someone burnt so badly as this man is, and still alive. Finn’s palms itch, and the Force _shoves_ him between the shoulderblades. He stumbles forward to the side of the makeshift pallet the man is lying on, drops to his knees and puts his hands on the man’s bare, burnt skin, and opens himself to the Force.

Dimly, behind him, he can hear Rey saying, “No, don’t touch him, he’s _helping_ ,” can hear the Wookiee warbling in distress, can hear Poe’s astonished gasp and Skywalker’s equally quiet murmur of surprise, but then even that falls away, and the only thing Finn knows is the Force running through him, endless and beautiful, down through his hands into the burnt and broken body of the man who must not die.


	8. Chapter 8

Finn loses himself in the song, in the bright beauty of the Force, and he has no idea how long he kneels there, though his knees are aching when the Force finally lets him go. He sits back on his heels, shaking out his tingling hands, and blinks at the man on the bed - the completely healed man. Finn is faintly surprised. He wasn’t sure there was enough _left_ to heal.

The man blinks himself awake and stares up at Finn, then down at his own body. His charred clothing is still scattered around him, but there’s no evidence anymore of the horrible wounds. “Huh,” he says after a while, and looks back at Finn, and holds out a hand. “Thanks, kid.”

Finn shakes it, grinning. “You’re welcome,” he says. “I’m Finn. Who’re you?”

“Han Solo,” the man says, and sits up, and is promptly engulfed in a Wookiee hug. Finn stands up, swaying a little, and Rey tucks herself under his shoulder and hands him a ration bar. Food sounds _really_ good right about now. Finn finishes the bar in three bites, and then the next one, and then Poe comes trotting back into the room - when did he leave? - with his arms full of ration bars, and Rey steers Finn over to a chair, and she and Poe set up a sort of assembly line to unwrap the bars so the only thing Finn needs to do is eat.

He gets through eight more before he stops feeling like food is the most important thing in the universe, and by that time Han Solo has mostly extricated himself from the Wookiee - and Skywalker, for that matter, who apparently joined the hug at some point while Finn was a little busy refueling.

“So not that I’m not grateful,” Solo says, “but what brings three Force-users and a pilot to this particular bit of nowhere?”

“We’re looking for my sister,” Skywalker explains. “And what happened to _you_ , Han?”

“A slight misunderstanding,” Solo says. Chewbacca yowls something.

“Kanjiklub _and_ the Guavian Death Gang?” Rey says incredulously.

“I didn’t know you understood Wookiee,” Finn observes in an undertone, and Rey gives him a brief bright smile.

“The things you learn on Jakku,” she murmurs back.

“A misunderstanding,” Solo insists. “They thought I owed them money.”

“...Did you?” Skywalker asks, sounding amused.

“...Maybe,” Solo replies, shrugging. Chewbacca yowls something else, and Solo spreads his hands and gives his partner an innocent look. “Come on, I _almost_ got us out of it!”

Finn’s never seen a Wookiee facepalm before.

“So,” says Rey, and Finn suspects that she’s attempting to head off the inevitable argument before it can start, “do _you_ know where General Organa and the Resistance are likely to be?”

Solo looks startled, then thoughtful. “Toss me one of those ration bars, would you?” he asks, and chews on it meditatively for a few minutes. “She’s on the run, hiding out,” he says at last. “Right?”

“Right,” Poe says, nodding. “The old base got raided - it looked like they got out just barely in time.”

“So,” Solo says slowly. “She’s on the run, she knows _they_ know she’s using old Rebellion bases, so she’ll go for the last place anyone would ever look for her - the place _everyone_ knows she hates worst in the galaxy.” He shrugs. “Hoth.”

Skywalker winces. “...Yeah,” he says. “That makes a disturbing amount of sense.”

Poe shivers. “Great,” he says gloomily. “I _hate_ snow planets.”

*

Solo about has raptures when they reach the _Falcon_ , patting its bulkheads and poking his head into every compartment as he goes past. Chewbacca seems equally overcome. Rey shrugs at Finn and lets Skywalker and Solo take the pilots’ seats, sprawling out onto one of the couches instead. Finn sits down next to her and then realizes that he’s absolutely exhausted and slumps down until he’s lying with his head in her lap. Rey chuckles at him and scritches her fingers gently through his hair.

“Sleep,” she says. “We’ve got this under control.”

Finn nods vaguely and lets himself drift off, faintly aware that Poe and Chewbacca are making clattering noises in the tiny kitchen and Skywalker and Solo are bickering cheerfully in the cockpit and the _Falcon_ is humming happily around them all.

He wakes up when he hears Chewbacca yowl, a loud and very unhappy sound, and flails himself off the couch. Rey goes leaping over him towards the cockpit, and Finn accepts Poe’s hand up and follows her at a trot.

There are two enormous ships bristling with weaponry hanging in space on either side of the _Falcon_. They aren’t First Order, that’s easy enough to see; Finn raises an eyebrow at the slashes of red paint all over one, the random spikes on the other. “Who -?” he asks, and Solo chuckles mirthlessly.

“Kanjiklub and the Guavian Death Gang, of course,” he says. “I thought we’d lost them, but - apparently not.”

The comm crackles, and then a flat, furious voice says, “Surrender, Solo. _And then die._ ”

“That seems like a very bad way of trying to make someone surrender,” Poe says lightly, but his hand on Finn’s shoulder is tight, fingers digging in almost painfully.

“I don’t think we have the firepower to fight them both off,” Skywalker says thoughtfully.

“We don’t need firepower,” Rey says. “We have me.”

Everyone but Finn turns to look at her; Finn just smiles. Rey shrugs. “You’ve seen what _Finn_ can do,” she says. “I can’t heal like he can. My gifts are a little more...violent.” She raises her hands, fingers spread, and looks out the viewscreen at the looming, bristling ships, and smiles, and closes her hands into tight, tight fists.

Finn watches the heavy durasteel of the enemy ships crumple and buckle, and winces, just a little, imagining how terrifying that must be from the inside. But they’d hardly be any _less_ dead if the _Falcon_ had blasted them out of space, after all.

The flat voice comes over the comm again, no longer furious but terrified. “We surrender!” it cries. “We surrender, please, please stop -” There’s a horrible squeal of bending durasteel and the voice breaks off with a whimper.

And Rey opens her hands.

The crumpled ships hang in space for a long, breathless moment, and then each of them sprouts half a dozen tiny escape shuttles, which streak away from the _Falcon_ as fast as their drives can carry them. Rey shakes her hands out a little and folds her arms, watching with deep satisfaction as her enemies flee. Finn reaches over to wrap an arm around her shoulders.

“You’re _magnificent_ ,” he murmurs in her ear, and she slants a grin over at him, their bond blazing with pride and ferocious joy.

“That was very impressive,” Skywalker says, sounding more than a little taken aback.

“We coulda used you against the Death Star, kid,” is Solo’s contribution.

Chewbacca yowls something that certainly _sounds_ approving. Poe is still staring, wide-eyed, at the crumpled ships. Rey shrugs.

“Shouldn’t we be on our way to Hoth?”

*

General Leia Organa looks at the motley assortment of people arrayed on the tarmac before her and then turns to her brother and raises an eloquent eyebrow and says, voice utterly flat, “Really?”

Finn is quite impressed. Someday he wants to have that sort of poise.

“I did think it was rather a bit _loud_ of the Force,” Skywalker says, stepping forward and opening his arms just a little - just enough to make him vulnerable, Finn thinks. “Sister. I - I am so sorry.”

General Organa looks up at him for a long, long moment, and then she steps forwards into his embrace, burying her face in his extravagant beard. Finn turns away. This reunion is - is not his to see, he doesn’t think.

Rey is already watching Poe and BB-8 reunite with the other pilots. There’s a tall, bearded man pounding Poe on the back energetically, while a small dark-haired woman embraces BB-8 and several other people, some human and some very much not, surround them all and babble excitedly. Finn reaches out to take Rey’s hand. There’s no one waiting so eagerly for _them_ , not anywhere in the galaxy; all they have is each other. But that’s enough. Finn doesn’t need anyone but Rey. He sends that down the bond between them, and Rey turns to smile at him and sends back her own bottomless affection, vast as the desert and as warm.

And then Poe turns and beckons to them, and Finn and Rey shrug at each other and cross to the crowd of excited pilots. “Guys,” Poe says happily, “this is Finn and this is Rey, and they saved my sorry ass _and_ found Beebee _and_ got us to Skywalker, so you gotta be nice to them.”

“Any friend of Poe’s,” says the bearded man who was embracing Poe, and holds out a hand to Finn. “I’m Snap Wexley.”

“Jess Pava,” says the small woman, rising from her knees with one hand braced on BB-8’s dome and the other outstretched. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

Finn and Rey shake hands with Snap and Jess and Nien and Muran and Kare and Bastian and half a dozen other people, so many names and faces that Finn’s head is spinning with them. And then there are more people pouring towards them from the inner corridors of the base, all wrapped up in coats and scarves - Finn and Rey have cloaked themselves in heat drawn from the Force, for lack of warmer clothing - and Finn finds himself greeting Kaydel and Tabala and Brance and so many others that they all begin to blur. And then Poe is there again, throwing his arms about Finn and Rey’s shoulders and steering them towards through the crowd.

“Dinner,” he says cheerfully. “I am _assured_ that we have something better than ration bars here.”

“Well,” Finn says, determinedly going with the flow, “it can’t possibly be _worse_.”

The pilots all laugh, and Finn and Rey glance at each other across Poe and shrug a little. Maybe this will work after all.

Maybe - impossibly - they have found true allies at last.

**Author's Note:**

> This will update Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday until it is done!
> 
> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr; drop on by.


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